A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

Call no man HAPPY till he dies
The story alluded to in quot. 1545 is narrated in Herodotus’ Histories I. xxxii: when the great Athenian lawgiver Solon visited Croesus, the fabulously wealthy king of Lydia, the latter asked Solon who was the happiest man he had ever seen—expecting the answer to be himself. C f . SOPHOCLES Oedipus Rex 1. 1529
/u/Jf'v oz0£m, я/ш dr T£p/za да л«/кктр ptj^v &y£ivov Л, deem no man happy, until he passes the end of his life without suffering grief; OVID Metamorphoses iii. 135 dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo .. debet, nobody should be called blessed before his death.

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  1545 R. TAVERNER tr. Erasmus’Adages (ed. 2) 53^V Salon aunsered kynge Cresus, that no man could be named happy, tyl he had happely and prosperouslye passed the course of his lyfe. 1565 NORTON & SACKVILLE Gorboduc III. i. Oh no man happie, till his ende be seene. 1603 J. FLORIO tr. Montaigne’s Essays I. xviii. We must exspect of man the latest day, Nor e’er he die, he’s happie, can we say. 1891 Times 5 Dec. 9 Call no man happy till he dies is the motto .. suggested by the career of Dom Pedro [emperor of Brazil]. 1967 C. S. FORESTER Hornblower & Crisis 163 ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’ . . He was seventy-two, and yet there was still time for this dream . . to change to a nightmare. “good fortune; happiness
  

happy see also happy is the BRIDE that the sun shines on; happy is the COUNTRY which has no history; a DEAF husband and a blind wife are always a happy couple; happy’s the WOOING that is not long a-doing.
HARD cases make bad law
Difficult cases cause the clarity of the law to be obscured by exceptions and strained interpretations.

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  1854 G. HAYES in W. S. Holdsworth Hist. English Law (1926) IX. 423 A hard case. But hard cases make bad law. 1945 W. S. CHURCHILL in Hansard (Commons) 12 June 1478 Well, of course, hard cases do not make good laws. 1991 Times 17 Sept. 29 Hard cases not only make bad law. They also create bad feeling between judges. 2001 Spectator 21 July 18 Hard cases make bad law, no doubt, and maybe bad policy, but this case is far from unique. "law and lawyers; rules, general