"Law is the practice of rules in a context of deals"

--- Adam Gopnik, referring to context of Abraham Lincoln's thought, in Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (2009), Ch. 1, Lincoln's Mind.

In context:

A love of the grease and a feel for the gist, the habit of compromise even at the cost of absolute clarity, a restatement of technical argument in emphatic simplicities, clarity achieved and helpful ambiguity sought—these were the heart of Lincoln’s style, and of his soul. They explain why we still argue about him: he said very clear things against slavery—and, for a time at least, he was ready to keep the slaves if he could find a bargain to keep the South in the Union. Law is the practice of rules in a context of deals, and Lincoln believed in both.

Curiously, Gopnik's phrase works just as well inverted, though perhaps better if Regulation is substituted as the subject: "Regulation is the practice of deals in a context of rules."

"Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it"

--- Benedictus Spinoza, quoted by Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, Part I: Experiences in a Concentration Camp, p. 74

Quote from Frankl:

What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? –“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

This is from the Ethics, Part V, Prop III (Latin).  The Elwes translation is available on Gutenberg.org:

PROP. III. An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof.

Proof.--An emotion, which is a passion, is a confused idea (by the general Def. of the Emotions). If, therefore, we form a clear and distinct idea of a given emotion, that idea will only be distinguished from the emotion, in so far as it is referred to the mind only, by reason (II. xxi., and note); therefore (III. iii.), the emotion will cease to be a passion. Q.E.D.

Corollary--An emotion therefore becomes more under our control, and the mind is less passive in respect to it, in proportion as it is more known to us.

"a simile is just a metaphor with the scaffolding still up"

--- James Geary, I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World (2001), p. 8