The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory Quotes

“I am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, it 'l could, be both handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a twit, a bon vivant, and a lady killer, as well as a philosopher, and a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a "tone poet"' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. the millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's; the bon vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other; the philosopher and the lady killer could not well keep house in the same tenement of clay. Such characters may, at the outset of lice be alike possible to a man. But to make anyone of them actual, the rest must be more or less suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the t6rtunes of this self are
real, its failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them. (lames 1980: 309-10)”
― Martin P. Golding, The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory