Sir Matthew Hale Quotes. S. Austin Allibone, comp. 1880. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay

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S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Sir Matthew Hale


Though sometimes effected by the immediate fiat of the divine will, yet I think they are most ordinarily done by the ministration of angels. Sir Matthew Hale.	1

Considering the casualties of wars, transmigrations, especially that of the general flood, there might probably be an obliteration of all those monuments of antiquity that ages precedent at some time have yielded. Sir Matthew Hale.	2

There is no book like the Bible for excellent learning, wisdom, and use. Sir Matthew Hale.	3

There is a certain magic or charm in company, for it will assimilate, and make you like to them, by much conversation with them: if they be good company, it is a great means to make you good, or confirm you in goodness; but if they be bad, it is twenty to one but they will infect and corrupt you. Therefore be wary and shy in choosing and entertaining, or frequenting any company or companions; be not too hasty in committing yourself to them; stand off awhile till you have inquired of some (that you know by experience to be faithful) what they are; observe what company they keep; be not too easy to gain acquaintance, but stand off, and keep a distance yet awhile, till you have observed and learnt touching them. Men or women that are greedy of acquaintance, or hasty in it, are oftentimes snared in ill company before they are aware, and entangled so that they cannot easily loose from it after, when they would. Sir Matthew Hale.	4

Hither conscience is to be referred: If by a comparison of things done with the rule there be a consonancy, then follows the sentence of approbation; if discordant from it, the sentence of disapprobation. Sir Matthew Hale.	5

Let your words be few, especially when your superiors, or strangers, are present, lest you betray your own weakness, and rob yourselves of the opportunity which you might otherwise have had, to gain knowledge, wisdom, and experience, by hearing those whom you silence by your impertinent talking…. Be careful not to interrupt another when he is speaking: hear him out, and you will understand him the better, and be able to give him the better answer. Sir Matthew Hale.	6

Certain passive strictures, or signatures, of that wisdom which hath made and ordered all things with the highest reason. Sir Matthew Hale.	7

All the notion we have of duration is partly by the successiveness of its own operations, and partly by those external measures that it finds in motion. Sir Matthew Hale.	8

The various dialects of the English in the north and west render their expressions many times unintelligible to the other, and both scarce intelligible to the midland. Sir Matthew Hale.	9

The influx of the knowledge of God, in relation to everlasting life, is infinitely of moment. Sir Matthew Hale.	10

Abatements may take away infallible concludency in these evidences of fact, yet they may be probable and inductive of credibility, though not of science. Sir Matthew Hale.	11

Neither the divine determinations, persuasions or inflections of the understanding or will of rational creatures doth deceive the understanding, pervert the will, or necessitate either to any moral evil. Sir Matthew Hale.	12

Contemplation of human nature doth by a necessary connection and chain of causes carry us up to the Deity. Sir Matthew Hale.	13

There is the same necessity for the divine influence and regimen to order and govern, conserve and keep together, the universe in that consistence it hath received, as it was at first to give it before it could receive it. Sir Matthew Hale.	14

To the present impulses of sense, memory, and instinct, all the sagacities of brutes may be reduced; though witty men, by analytical resolution, have chymically extracted an artificial logic out of all their actions. Sir Matthew Hale.	15




The sagacities and instincts of brutes, the spontaneousness of many of their animal motions, are not explicable without supposing some active determinate power connected to and inherent in their spirits, of a higher extraction than the bare natural modification of matter. Sir Matthew Hale.	16

Implanted instincts in brutes are in themselves highly reasonable and useful to their ends, and evincible by true reason to be such. Sir Matthew Hale.	17

All other knowledge merely serves the concerns of this life, and is fitted to the meridian thereof: they are such as will be of little use to a separate soul. Sir Matthew Hale.	18

Languages of countries are lost by transmission of colonies of a different language. Sir Matthew Hale.	19

Many things that obtain as common law had their original by parliamentary acts, or constitutions made in writings by the king, lords, and commons. Sir Matthew Hale.	20

All before Richard I. is before time of memory; and what is since is, in a legal sense, within the time of memory. Sir Matthew Hale.	21

All the laws of this kingdom have some monuments or memorials thereof in writing, yet all of them have not their original in writing; for some of those laws have obtained their force by immemorial usage or custom. Sir Matthew Hale.	22

According to a juridical account and legal signification, time within memory, by the statute of Westminster, was settled in the beginning of the reign of King Richard the First. Sir Matthew Hale.	23

When the wisest counsel of men have with the greatest prudence made laws, yet frequent emergencies happen which they did not foresee, and therefore they are put upon repeals and supplements of such their laws; but Almighty God, by one ample foresight, foresaw all events, and could therefore fit laws proportionate to the things he made. Sir Matthew Hale.	24

Jurors are not bound to believe two witnesses, if the probability of the fact does reasonably encounter them. Sir Matthew Hale.	25

The proper acts of the intellect are intellection, deliberation, and determination or decision. Sir Matthew Hale.	26

The intellectual faculty is a goodly field, capable of great improvement; and it is the worst husbandry in the world to sow it with trifles or impertinences. Sir Matthew Hale.	27

The moral goodness and congruity, or evilness, unfitness, and unseasonableness, of moral and natural action, falls not within the verge of a brutal faculty. Sir Matthew Hale.	28

Many excellent things are in nature which by reason of the remoteness from us, and unaccessibleness to them, are not within any of our faculties to apprehend. Sir Matthew Hale.	29

Opinion is, when the assent of the understanding is so far gained by evidence of probability that it rather inclines to one persuasion than to another, yet not altogether without a mixture of uncertainty or doubting. Sir Matthew Hale.	30

The moral of that poetical fiction, that the uppermost link of all the series of subordinate causes is fastened to Jupiter’s chair, signifies … that Almighty God governs and directs subordinate causes and effects. Sir Matthew Hale.	31

There is the same necessity for the divine influence to keep together the universe in that consistence it hath received as it was first to give it. Sir Matthew Hale.	32

Prudence is principally in reference to actions to be done, and due means, order, reason, and method of doing or not doing. Sir Matthew Hale.	33

The thread and train of consequences in intellective ratiocination is often long, and chained together by divers links, which cannot be done in imaginative ratiocination by some attributed to brutes. Sir Matthew Hale.	34

Though this vicinity of ourselves to ourselves cannot give us the full prospect of all the intrigues of our nature, yet we have much more advantage to know ourselves than to know other things without us. Sir Matthew Hale.	35

Next to the knowledge of God this knowledge of ourselves seems most worthy of our endeavour. Sir Matthew Hale.	36

The animal soul sooner expands and evolves itself to its full orb and extent than the human soul. Sir Matthew Hale.	37

This little active principle, as the body increaseth and dilateth, evolveth, diffuseth, and expandeth, if not his substantial existence, yet his energy. Sir Matthew Hale.	38

The intellectual husbandry is a goodly field, and it is the worst husbandry in the world to sow it with trifles. Sir Matthew Hale.	39

Many conclusions of moral and intellectual truths seem to be congenite with us. Sir Matthew Hale.	40

Scholars sometimes in common speech, or writing in their native language, give terminations and idiotisms suitable to their native language unto words newly invented. Sir Matthew Hale.	41

We must remember that laws were not made for their own sakes, but for the sake of those who were to be guided by them; and though it is true that they are and ought to be sacred, yet if they be or are become unuseful for their end, they must either be amended, if it may be, or new laws be substituted, and the old repealed, so it be done regularly, deliberately, and so far forth only as the exigence or convenience justly demands it; and in this respect the saying is true, Salus populi suprema lex esto. He that thinks a state can be exactly steered by the same laws in every kind as it was two or three hundred years ago, may as well imagine that the clothes that fitted him when a child should serve him when he was grown a man. The matter changeth, the custom, the contracts, the commerce, the dispositions, educations, and tempers of man and societies, change in a long tract of time, and so must their laws in some measure be changed, or they will not be useful for their state and condition; and, besides all this, time is the wisest thing under heaven. These very laws which at first seemed the wisest constitution under heaven, have some flaws and defects discovered in them by time. As manufactures, mercantile arts, architecture, and building, and philosophy itself, secure new advantages and discoveries by time and experience, so much more do laws which concern the manners and customs of men. Sir Matthew Hale: Hargrave’s Law Tracts.	42

Those rational instincts, the connate principles engraven in the human soul, though they are truths acquirable and deducible by rational consequence and argumentation, yet seem to be inscribed in the very crasis and texture of the soul, antecedent to any acquisition by industry or the exercise of the discursive faculty in man. Sir Matthew Hale: Orig. of Mankind.	43

Many conclusions of moral and intellectual truths seem, upon this account, to be congenite with us, connatural to us, and engraven in the very frame of the soul. Sir Matthew Hale: Orig. of Mankind.	44

Among the objects of knowledge two especially commend themselves to our contemplation: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. Sir Matthew Hale: Orig. of Mankind.	45

The due contemplation of the human nature doth, by a necessary connection and chain of causes, carry us up to the unavoidable acknowledgment of the Deity; because it carries every thinking man to an original of every successive individual. Sir Matthew Hale: Origin of Mankind.	46

The will is not a bare appetitive power, as that of the sensual appetite; but it is a rational appetite. Sir Matthew Hale: Origin of Mankind.	47

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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