I was doing a research for a matter on-line when I stumbled on the quote of Honore de Balzac below. I have decided to share the quote with everyone not because I agree with everything in it, I most certainly do not, but because it is nothing if not interesting. Some of the things in the quote are true, even in my short years of legal practice, I have seen quite a lot which always remind of the cliché that truth is always stranger than fiction. I have seen hitherto close siblings become bitter enemies because of their parents' inheritance, I have seen marriages break which had no business coming together in the first instance, I have seen people do things which make me wonder whether their brains were on sabbatical at the time of doing the deeds...
I do not agree with the author of the quote that priests, doctors and lawyers do not think well of the world, perhaps I am only speaking for myself in this wise, but I really haven't seen too much to make me agree with this part of the quote. While I agree that most priests and lawyers in most countries wear black robes, the only kind of doctors that my research tells me wear black robes are the academic doctors and not medical doctors that I think he means in his quote. I nevertheless think the quote is interesting enough to be shared with you.
There are in modern society three men who can never think well of the world, the priest, the doctor and the man of law. And they wear black robes, perhaps because they are in mourning for every virtue and every illusion. The most hapless of these is the lawyer. He sees the same evil feelings repeated again and again. Nothing can correct them. Our offices are sewers which can never be cleansed. I have known wills burned. I have seen mothers robbing their children, wives kill their husbands. I could not tell you all I have seen for I have seen crimes against which justice is impotent. In short, all the horrors that romancers suppose they have invented are still below the truth.
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)
