The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.
Miguel De CervantesRead
But do not give it to a lawyer's clerk to write, for they use a legal hand that Satan himself will not understand.
Interpretation
This quote humorously critiques the legibility of legal writing.
Miguel De Cervantes humorously suggests that legal documents are so poorly written that even a devil would struggle to comprehend them. This reflects a broader criticism of the legal profession, implying that legal language is often unnecessarily complex and inaccessible to the average person.
In practice
In a speech about legal reform, one might use this quote to lighten the mood.
The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.
Patience and shuffle the cards.
It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well ... For I've heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what's more, she's blind, so she can't see what she's doing, and she doesn't know who she's knocking over or who she's raising up.
When the head aches, all the members partake of the pain.
Though Gods attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.
If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.
Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.
And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.
Rats They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles. Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.
Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.
I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.
The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there-so there the mountain stays.
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