Quotes & Sayings About The Letter Of The Law

A good practice carried to an extreme and worked in accordance with the letter of the law becomes a positive evil. — Swami Vivekananda

Small men command the letter of the law. Great men serve its spirit. For the spirit of the law is justice ... and justice is the spirit of God. — J.C. Marino

It is urged that the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the government and from penalties for the violation of laws. There is no she or her or hers in the tax laws, and this is equally true of all the criminal laws. — Susan B. Anthony

People who follow their religion to the letter of the law are just silly. I mean, I want to tell Hasidic Jews I promise you, God will not mind if you wear a nice cotton blend in the summer. — Sarah Silverman

Chieftains must understand that the spirit of the law is greater than its letter. — Attila The Hun

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. — Paul Fussell

The spirit of the law is the least of the things we're prepared to violate. — Howard Tayler

Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known. — Thomas Jefferson

Morris read through the letter. Was it a shade too fulsome? No, that was another law of academic life: it is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers. — David Lodge

Faith cannot be about absolute certainty in the letters of the Bible and wrath against those who don't comply (Ephesians 2:15). It has to be about overwhelming trust in God's love,6 which as the apostle Paul confirms, is beyond the letter of law and narrow legalistic interpretations. — Amos Smith

I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed. — Andrew Jackson

The functions of the president are prescribed by the Constitution, but his real achievements are not set by the letter of the law. They are determined rather by his personality, the weight of his influence, his capacity for managing men, and the strength and effectiveness of the party forces behind him. — Charles A. Beard

The original Constitution is a dead letter, having suffered decades of legislative, executive and judicial usurpation. The natural- and common law traditions, once loadstars for lawmakers, have been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute. However much one shovels the muck of lawmaking aside, natural justice and the Founders' original intent remain buried too deep to exhume. — Ilana Mercer

The priesthood of Christ is "not according to the law of a fleshy commandment, but according to the power of an indestructible life" (Heb. 7:16). Aaron was constituted high priest according to the powerless letter of the law, but Christ according to the powerful element of an indestructible life. Our High Priest is constituted of a life which nothing can conquer, but which rather conquers everything! It is a life which cannot be destroyed. A life which saves to the uttermost. The endless, eternal, divine, uncreated life. The resurrection life which has passed the test of death and Hades. — Witness Lee

A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high range of human possibilities. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Frequently you have a clash between the more sterile letter of the law and the justice that underlies it, and I think one of the things I've been trying more or less, where it was possible, is to go with the justice rather than the letter of the law. — Harold H. Greene

There is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. — R.J. Torbert

Why does my action strike them as so horrible? Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law ... and that's enough. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't make political statements; let's all have a laugh. Let's all live and be free. I try and live to the letter of the law, but right on the edge of it. — Mark Roberts

No. I am complying with the law - to the letter. Your law holds that my life, my work and my property may be disposed of without my consent. Very well, you mAy now dispose of me without my participation in the matter. I will not play the part of defending myself, where no defense is possible, and I will not simulate the illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice. — Ayn Rand

One might plausibly contend that Congress violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers when it exonerates itself from the impositions of the laws it obligates people outside the legislature to obey. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

While the stoning of children for heresy has fallen out of fashion in our country, you will not hear a moderate Christian or Jew arguing for a "symbolic" reading of passages of this sort. [ ... ] it is only by ignoring such barbarisms that the Good Book can be reconciled with life in the modern world. This is a problem for "moderation" in religion: it has nothing underwriting it other than the unacknowledged neglect of the letter of the divine law. — Sam Harris

When a fixed code of laws, which must be observed to the letter, leaves no further care to the judge than to examine the acts of citizens and to decide whether or not they conform to the law as written; then the standard of the just or the unjust, which is to be the norm of conduct for the ignorant as well as for the philosophic citizen, is not a matter of controversy but of fact; then only are citizens not subject to the petty tyrannies of the many which are the more cruel as the distance between the oppressed and the oppressor is less, and which are far more fatal than those of a single man, for the despotism of many can only be corrected by the despotism of one; the cruelty of a single despot is proportioned, not to his might, but to the obstacles he encounters. — Cesare Beccaria

It is not obedience to a standard that matters to God, but the fulfillment of the highest standard by the Spirit that is within. Holiness and purity are not obedience to an actual law, but the unconscious natural characteristics of the indwelling Holy Spirit. No one can imitate either. This is why so many who have never experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit are so stern and unchristlike, and such sticklers for obeying the letter of the truth. These carnal Christians are not spiritual in God's sight. — Oswald Chambers

In general, we as police officers - at least the good police officers - like to look at each situation case by case and always pay close attention to the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. — Steven Seagal

HONOR. This means that a girl is not satisfied with keeping the letter of the law when she really breaks it in spirit.
LOYAL. This means that she is true to her country, to the city or village where she is a citizen, to her family, her church, her school, and those for whom she may work or who may work for her.
HELPFUL. The simplest way of saying this for the very young Scout is to do a good turn to someone every day: that is, to be a giver and not a taker. This is the spirit that makes the older Scout into a fine, useful, dependable woman. — Juliette Gordon Low

[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]
Dear Boy,
Why don't you write to me? I don't know what has become of you.
As for me I am ruined. The law suit is going against me and I am afraid I will have to pay costs, which means leaving Oxford and doing some horrid work to earn bread. The world is too much for me.
However, I have seen Greece and had some golden days of youth. I go back to Oxford immediately for viva voce and then think of rowing up the river to town with Frank Miles. Will you come?
Yours
Oscar — Oscar Wilde

She wrote the phone number down on another slip of paper, rushed into the bathroom, crumpled up the letter, and flushed it down the toilet. For one paralyzing moment she envisioned federal law enforcement agents hiding somewhere in the White House intercepting her toilet water and reconstructing the letter. But that was impossible. That was the stuff of Orwell's 1984. Yet in some ways, by living at the White House, she had already seen Orwell's masterpiece of "fascism perfected" in a way most Americans could never imagine. She — David Baldacci

The law is what he lives by. He'll do his best to prevent someone from beating up somebody else, then he'll turn around and try to stop no less than the Federal Government - just like you, child. You turned and tackled no less than your own tin god - but remember this, he'll always do it by the letter and by the spirit of the law. That's the way he lives. — Harper Lee

The letter of the law should bend; and this bending should be with the winds of freedom rather than toward the lifelessness of still punishment. — Joshua Emmet

I am convinced that all our attempts to change the letter of the law and to reeducate people have been, and are, merely band-aid solutions for a fatal hemorrhage. The system will never change because our starting point is flawed. The secular view of man can neither give the grandeur that God alone can give, nor can it see the evil within the human heart that God alone can reveal and cure, for atheism implicitly denudes each individual of the grand image God has imprinted upon His creation. — Ravi Zacharias

As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.
[Letter to Voltaire, 25 Nov. 1777] — Frederick The Great

Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself. — Rutherford B. Hayes

A person motivated by love rather than fear will not only obey the letter of the law, but will eagerly seek out new ways to carry out business with transparency and integrity. — Timothy Keller

Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom. Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter. — Ludwig Von Mises

No, I promised him I wouldn't fight a giant." "So you obey the letter of the law and not the spirit," she said. "Yes." My teeth finally stopped chattering. I loved my turtleneck. I loved my jacket. I loved my boots. Mmm, wonderful warm boots. "How come when I do that, you chew me out?" "Because you don't do it well enough to get away with it." Julie blinked. "What kind of move was that, at the end?" "It's from Escrima, a Filipino martial art. I'll show you when we get a minute, but you will have to practice, because it has to be done really fast for it to work. — Ilona Andrews

The overall similarity is probably in the mentality of law enforcement officers. There's a sense of wanting to really uphold a sense of morality and make sure that the laws are enforced to the letter, whenever possible. — Benjamin McKenzie

This is exactly the point Jesus reiterates in Matthew 23:23, where he exhorts the people to keep "the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness," without neglecting the responsibility they have to tithe their mint, dill, and cumin. Clearly, Jesus doesn't want us to keep the little commandments in Scripture and miss the big stuff, but neither does he allow us to overlook the smallest parts so long as we get the big picture right. He expects obedience to the spirit of the law and to the letter. Our Messiah sees himself as an expositor of Scripture, but never a corrector of Scripture. He fulfills it, but never falsifies it. He turns away wrong interpretations of Scripture, but insists there is nothing wrong with Scripture, down to the crossing of t's and dotting of i's. — Kevin DeYoung

The decision violates both the letter and spirit of the law. — Philip E. Berger

If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons, to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians; and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are able to find among them no such act of adoption; we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.
['Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law?', letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, from Monticello, February 10, 1814] — Thomas Jefferson

Religious laws, in all the major religious traditions, have both a letter and a spirit. As I understand the words and example of Jesus, the spirit of the law is all-important whereas the letter, while useful ... becomes lifeless and deadly without it. In accord with this distinction a yearning to worship on wilderness ridges or beside rivers rather than in churches could legitimately be called evangelical ... if your words or deeds harmonize with the example of Jesus, you are evangelical in spirit whether you claim to be or not. When the non-Christian Ambrose Bierce wrote, "War is the means by which Americans learn geography," his words are aimed at the same antiwar end as "Blessed are the peacemakers. — David James Duncan

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation. — Howard Zinn

In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision ... Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. 'Tragic Death of "Promising" Young Man.' ... The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Flinn (22) had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' ... The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner? — Julian Barnes

There is no letter of the law to follow in Zen. There is a lot of etiquette, but there are no rules. — Frederick Lenz

Ah me! what torture to have to deal with virtue, cold and merciless as the letter of the law! — Henryk Sienkiewicz

[T]he guilty as well as the innocent are entitled to due process of law. They are entitled to a fair trial. They are entitled to counsel. They are entitled to fair treatment from the police. The law enforcement officer has the same duty as the citizen-indeed, he has a higher duty-to abide by the letter and spirit of our Constitution and laws. You yourselves must be careful to obey the letter of the law. You yourselves must be intellectually honest in the enforcement of the law. — Harry S. Truman

How strange and unnatural destiny is. I married a man eight years younger than myself, and according to the law of nature I should have been the first to die, with Him at my side. Instead, it was my destiny to witness His death.'
In speaking of Giuseppe, she always wrote Him, with a capital letter. Her style was prolix, repetitive, but with a certain academic nobility; and her handwriting was elongated, fine, even elegant. (However, in her final decline, her letters grew shorter and her written words, all shaky and twisted, groped across the page, uncertain of their direction.) — Elsa Morante

I am a deeply religious person, but I belong to no denomination. I follow the spirit of God's law, not the letter of the law. One can become so attached to the outward symbols and structure of religion that one forgets its original intent - to bring one closer to God. We can only gain access to the Kingdom of God by realizing it dwells within us as well as in all humanity. Know that we are all cells in the ocean of infinity, each contributing to the others' welfare. — Peace Pilgrim

bit of inaccurate information that somehow concerned crop or commodity market information or conditions. It does not matter whether you sent that message by telephone or mail or telegraph. It does not matter who you sent that letter to. It does not matter whether the information was actually false, or merely misleading. It does not matter whether your note actually had any effect on market prices anywhere, or even whether you intended for it to have that effect. The way this law was written by the morons in Congress, you are guilty of a felony if you send a postcard to your grandmother in a nursing home, trying to make her feel better by lying about how nice the weather has been in Florida, or how low the gas prices have been. And you will not find this law in Title 18 either; this one is buried in the bowels of Title 7 (sec. 13), which lists the laws supposedly regulating "Agriculture." Even — James Duane

A recent book by University of Chicago professor of philosophy and law Brian Leiter outlines what I believe will become the theoretical consensus that does away with religious liberty in spirit if not in letter. "There is no principled reason," he writes, "for legal or constitutional regimes to single out religion for protection." . . . Evoking the principle of fairness, Leiter argues that everybody's conscience should be accorded the same legal protections. Thus he proposes to replace religious liberty with a plenary "liberty of conscience."

Leiter's argument is libertarian. He wants to get the government out of the business of deciding whose conscience is worth protecting. This mentality seems to expand freedom, but that's an illusion. In practice it will lead to diminished freedom, as is always the case with any thoroughgoing libertarianism. — R. R. Reno

God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief who died with Jesus on Calvary was far more perfect than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. And yet, abstractly speaking, what is more holy than the priesthood and less holy than the state of a criminal? The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it. — Thomas Merton

In my father's last letter he said that the world is run by those willing to take the responsibility for the running of it. If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. — Cormac McCarthy

If we move in the direction of biblial absolutism how can we escape turning the New Testament into a Christian Torah and the gospel into a new law? Once we do that, religious fascism with all its sectarian ugliness cannot be far away. Far better a mistaken Christian (a heretic) who has somehow caught the Spirit of Christ, than an orthodox Protestant who thinks that the Spirit is mediated to him through the letter of correct theology. — Robert D. Brinsmead

I flattered myself by thinking that, if faced with such a circumstance, I would respond within the letter of the law; but passion is a strange thing, a thing that warps and twists everything with which it comes in contact. — Craig Johnson

Diversity is a very popular business topic today while the negative side of diversity, discrimination, remains a touchy and sensitive topic. Even in organisations which follow the letter of the law in terms of not discriminating against any individuals, it is common for people to show prejudice and bias...Have the courage to stand out from your colleagues by being very open to and comfortable with all kinds of diversity amongst your colleagues and stakeholders. When you sense someone is being ignored or marginalized spend time with them and bring them into discussions encouraging them to speak up as needed. — Nigel Cumberland

A program can only do what it's programmed to do, to the letter of the law. Unfortunately, what's written doesn't always coincide with what the programmer intended the program to do. — Anonymous

A man must make the Bible his rule of conduct. He must make its leading principles the compass by which he steers his course through life. By the letter or spirit of the Bible he must test every difficult point and question. "To the law and to the testimony! What saith the Scripture?" He ought to care nothing for what other people may think right. He ought not to set his watch by the clock of his neighbour, but by the sun-dial of the Word. — J.C. Ryle

Only a fool permits the letter of the law to override the spirit in the heart. Do not let a piece of paper stand in the way of true love and headlines. — Rod Stewart

Andrew Carnegie, the poverty-stricken Scotch lad who started to work at two cents an hour and finally gave away $365 million, learned early in life that the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants. He attended school only four years; yet he learned how to handle people. To illustrate: His sister-in-law was worried sick over her two boys. They were at Yale, and they were so busy with their own affairs that they neglected to write home and paid no attention whatever to their mother's frantic letters. Then Carnegie offered to wager a hundred dollars that he could get an answer by return mail, without even asking for it. Someone called his bet; so he wrote his nephews a chatty letter, mentioning casually in a postscript that he was sending each one a five-dollar bill. He neglected, however, to enclose the money. Back came replies by return mail thanking "Dear Uncle Andrew" for his kind note and - you can finish the sentence yourself. — Dale Carnegie

Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope - and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing - that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that ... ' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already.
It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so. — Christopher Hitchens

Anger is one of those emotions that doesn't follow the letter of the law. It speaks before it thinks. It rears up on its hind legs and charges. — Lynn Coady

Have you ever heard that old joke about juries? Do you really want to be judged by twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty? Yes-that's exactly who you want judging you. Because juries are people unfamiliar with the letter of the law. And those are people who can be swayed-by lots of elements that have absolutely nothing to do with facts. — Emma Chase

It would be easy to assume that the open letter is a symptom of the Internet age. Such is not the case. In 1774, Benjamin Franklin wrote an open letter to the prime minister of Great Britain, Lord North - a satirical call for the imposition of martial law in the colonies. — Roxane Gay

The laws of democracy remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals — Plato

In all religions, as in all legal systems. people find ways to skirt the rules. We obey the letter of the law without honoring its spirit, and then reassure ourselves of our righteousness. — Sy Montgomery

Paul wrote the book of Romans as a letter to the Christians in Rome. These Roman believers were mostly Gentiles who had received the Gospel, been born again, and were committed to following the Lord. However, they were being troubled by Jewish believers who were trying to mix the Old Testament law with Christianity. — Andrew Wommack

It may be that these loan arrangements conform to the letter of the law, but they do not conform to the spirit of the law and to the principle of transparency on which it is based. — Bill Vaughan

Sermon On the Mount: "You have heard it said of old..."

"Jesus was referring to the 'letter of the Mosaic law' of the OT then went on to illustrate that He embodied the fulfillment of that 'law' and that now we may walk in the 'Law of the Spirit' thereby realizing the 'liberty' He came to 'engift' us with. We therefore are no longer subject to judgement but rather Grace as we 'abide' in Him. Additionally, the 'early church' fathers of which Paul was the first are what God intended the Ecclesia to be developed and built upon".

~R. Alan Woods [2012] — R. Alan Woods

I'm the strongest advocate you can imagine for doing things honestly and paying your taxes. Take advantage of every tax break you're legally entitled to. But I follow the letter of the law, because the consequences are severe if you're caught. I was a perpetrator at one time and suffered severe consequences. It is difficult in some places, but if you live in places like California, move somewhere else to save some money. — Michael Franzese

designer can inject the most artistic flair. The word "ampersand" didn't come into being until the nineteenth century. At that time & was customarily taught as the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet and pronounced "and." When schoolchildren recited their ABCs, they concluded with the words "and, per se [i.e., by itself ], 'and.'" This eventually became corrupted to "ampersand." The symbol is a favorite of law and — Ben Yagoda

God's standard of truth entailed more than merely "not lying." In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "You have heard it said ... but I say unto you." Jesus took the Old Testament laws to a deeper level of meaning and obedience, from the "letter of the Law" to the "Spirit of the Law." Following the letter of the law was the dead "religion" of which Barth, among others, had written. It was man's attempt to deceive God into thinking one was being obedient, which was a far greater deception. God always required something deeper than religious legalism. — Eric Metaxas

It is the custom of the Roman Church which I unworthily serve with the help of God, to tolerate some things, to turn a blind eye to some, following the spirit of discretion rather than the rigid letter of the law. — Pope Gregory VII

Write a love letter, a love paragraph, or a love sentence to your spouse, and give it quietly or with fanfare! You may someday find your love letter tucked away in some special place. Words are important! 6. Compliment your spouse in the presence of his parents or friends. You will get double credit: Your spouse will feel loved and the parents will feel lucky to have such a great son-in-law or daughter-in-law. — Gary Chapman

As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation. — William Law