Meaning of “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”

Politics: A Treatise on Government, Book III, Chapter XVI, William Ellis translation; represented through the 1912 Dent witness / Project Gutenberg #6762. In comparing rule by a person with rule by law, Aristotle says that passion can affect even the best rulers and concludes that law is reason without desire.

An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735 first-edition scan), printed page 15 / scan leaf 21, line 297. “Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?” occurs inside the hostile “Paris” / Lord Hervey satire and questions disproportionate punishment. The first edition capitalizes “Butterfly” and “Wheel”; the frozen catalog capitalization is normalized, and the personal/polemical context remains explicit.

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, maxim 5, in Darius Lyman’s 1856 English rendering; maxim order can vary across editions.

Henry IV, Part 2, Act III Scene 1; reviewed against the 1921 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Samuel B. Hemingway. King Henry speaks the crown line at the close of his sleepless midnight monologue after contrasting his wakefulness with the sleep of poor subjects and the storm-tossed ship-boy. It remains dramatic kingship rhetoric rather than clinical evidence about leadership stress.

Nicomachean Ethics, Book II; Aristotle explains virtue as something developed through corresponding actions.

Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860, closing passage. Lincoln is defending Republican opposition to the extension of slavery into federal territories; the line retains that antislavery political context.