The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
The power of punishment is to silence, not to confute.
A sick person is a prisoner.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
Crimes generally punish themselves.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
One crime is everything; two nothing.
The contagion of crime is like that of the plague. Criminals collected together corrupt each other; they are worse than ever when at the termination of their punishment they re-enter society.
The number of laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter? He went to prison for three years, not Princeton.
Whatever you think of de Sade, he was a complex figure and we should not look for easy answers with him. He was, strangely perhaps, against the death penalty, and he was never put in prison for murders or anything like that.
By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
