As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
A sick person is a prisoner.
What restrains us from killing is partly fear of punishment, partly moral scruple, and partly what may be described as a sense of humor.
One crime has to be concealed by another.
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.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.
Wicked deeds are generally done, even with impunity, for the mere desire of occupation.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
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.
Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison.
Virtue pardons the wicked, as the sandal-tree perfumes the axe which strikes it.
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: “It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.”
To be at peace in crime! Ah, who can thus flatter himself.
The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and 'mangled mind' leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour -- for the horse was soon tackled -- was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen.
Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.
