Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.
If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
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.
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel--dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
I have never been contained except I made the prison.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
The public have more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.
Those magistrates who can prevent crime, and do not, in effect encourage it.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
