The Just and The Unjust - Quotes

Quotes

• "'Don't be cynical,' Judge Coates said. 'A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten years old that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset.'"

• "'I don't know about you, sir,' Abner said, 'But when somebody tells me I am, or was, an ass, I may grant the truth of the matter alleged, but nobody can stop me wanting to interpose a demurrer to the evidence.'"

• "You just had to take a practical view that a man always lied on his own behalf, and paid his lawyer, who was an expert, a professional liar, to show him new and better ways of lying. Abner remembered a passage his father was fond of quoting from a life of Chief Justice Parsons, or someone like that, about the plaintiff who brought an action against a neighbor for borrowing and breaking a cooking pot. Advice of counsel was that the defendant should plead that he never borrowed the pot; and that he used it carefully and returned it whole; also, that the pot was broken and useless when he borrowed it; also, that he borrowed the pot from someone not the plaintiff; also, that the pot in question was defendant's own pot; also that the plaintiff never owned a pot, cooking or other; also that—and so on, and so on."

• "The jurors were plain or homely speakers themselves, indifferent to grammar and disdainful of elegant pronunciations; but that particular accent of Mrs. Zollicoffer's served as a reminder that she, like all the rest of these people, came from the city. With irritation the jury heard the foreigners, the people from somewhere else, having their presumptious say. Justice for all was a principle they understood and believed in; but by "all" they did not perhaps really mean persons low-down and no good. They meant that any accused person should be given a fair, open hearing, so that a man might explain, if he could, the appearances that seemed to be against him. If his reputation and presence were good; he was presumed to be innocent; if they were bad, he was presumed to be guilty. If the law presumed differently, the law presumed alone."