Walter Bagehot: “Any of these varied Constitutions may be right, but all of them can scarcely be right.”

The lessons are good where its primitive assumptions hold, but may be false where those assumptions fail.

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner.

I cannot, therefore, join in the full cry against anomalies; in my judgment it may quickly overrun the scent, and so miss what we should be glad to find.

It is natural that those who by special and admirable culture have come to look at all things upon the artistic side, should start back from these queer peculiarities.