Weekend Words: Law
In Germany, it was revealed this week, a 1938 law is still on the books that legalized the Nazi seizure of thousands of “degenerate” artworks.
“What is the law?” asks Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost Souls (1932).
In Germany, it was revealed this week, a 1938 law is still on the books that legalized the Nazi seizure of thousands of “degenerate” artworks, including the entire Modernist collection — 800 works in all — of the Kunsthalle Mannheim.
This law will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the paintings, drawings and prints recently discovered in the apartment of 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt, who inherited them from his from his father, a Nazi-era art dealer, to be returned to their rightful owners.
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
—Jonathan Swift, Critical Essay on the Faculties of the Mind
“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”
—Abraham Lincoln
“Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.”
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals.”
—Niccolo Machiavelli
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”
—Edmund Burke
“The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me: than thousands of gold and silver.”
—Psalms, 119
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
—Aleister Crowley
“Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.”
—Immanuel Kant
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
—Plato
“Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.”
—William Blake
