"When we find a series of decisions running down from the time of Sir William Grant, we should be very cautious, and very slow to overrule them."

“I take it that reasonable human conduct is part of the ordinary course of things.”

“I do not wish to shake titles, and I shall do precisely what our predecessors have always done—leave the case where it is. It is a rock ahead that everybody knows.”

“I confess that when I am sought to be driven to a conclusion which appears to me unreasonable and unjust, I at once suspect the validity of the premises, even if I can detect no flaw in the reasoning from them.”

“One does not like to differ from a man without knowing the reasons which influenced him.”

“Unless Parliament has conferred upon the Court that power in language which is unmistakable, the Court is not to assume that Parliament intended to do that which so seriously affect foreigners who are not resident here, and might give offence to foreign Governments. Unless Parliament has used such plain terms as show that they really intended us to do that, we ought not to do it.”

“We, as lawyers, as men of business, as men of experience, know perfectly well what evils necessarily result from handing over a great family estate to a mortgagee in possession, whose only chance of getting his money is to sacrifice the interests of everybody to money-getting.”