It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.—Bolingbroke.
A mouse-trap; easy to enter but not easy to get out of.—Mrs Balfour.
What can idle laws do with morals?—Horace.
The law is a gun, which if it misses a pigeon always kills a crow; if it does not strike the guilty it hits some one else. As every crime creates a law, so in turn every law creates a crime.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Learning.—It adds a precious seeing to the eye.—Shakespeare.
You are to consider that learning is of great use to society; and though it may not add to the stock, it is a necessary vehicle to transmit it to others. Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountain-heads.—James Northcote.
Learning makes a man fit company for himself.—Young.
Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches.—Cicero.
The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.—Johnson.
No man can ever want this mortification of his vanity, that what he knows is but a very little, in comparison of what he still continues ignorant of. Consider this, and, instead of boasting thy knowledge of a few things, confess and be out of countenance for the many more which thou dost not understand.—Thomas à Kempis.