Laws act after crimes have been committed; prevention goes before them both. Zimmermann.
Laws and rights are transmitted like an inveterate hereditary disease. Goethe.
Laws are generally found to be nets of such texture as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle size are alone entangled in. Shenstone.
Laws are intended to guard against what 45 men may do, not to trust what they will do. Junius.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. Swift.
Laws are like spider webs, small flies are ta'en, / While greater flies break in and out again. Braithwaite.
Laws are not made for particular cases, but for men in general. Johnson.
Laws are not made like nets—to catch, but like sea-marks—to guide. Sir P. Sidney.
Laws are not masters, but servants, and he 50 rules them who obeys them. Ward Beecher.
Laws are not our life, only the house wherein our life is led; nay, they are but the bare walls of the house; all whose essential furniture, the inventions and traditions and daily habits that regulate and support our existence, are the work not of Dracos and Hampdens, but of Phœnician mariners, of Italian masons, and Saxon metallurgists, of philosophers, alchymists, prophets, and the long-forgotten train of artists and artisans, who from the first have been jointly teaching us how to think and how to act, how to rule over spiritual and physical nature. Carlyle.