Quotes

The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.

Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.

When it comes to freedom, we are but prisoners of our own desires.

No crime has been without a precedent.

I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator.

Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which others are not even indicted.

Any punishment that does not correct, that can merely rouse rebellion in whoever has to endure it, is a piece of gratuitous infamy which makes those who impose it more guilty in the eyes of humanity, good sense and reason, nay a hundred times more guilty than the victim on whom the punishment is inflicted.

I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

It is hard, but it is excellent, to find the right knowledge of when correction is necessary and when grace doth most avail.