Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.
The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.
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.
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
Do not lay on the multitude the blame that is due to a few.
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?
Body is a home, a prison and a grave.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
History is full of people who went to prison or were burned at the stake for proclaiming their ideas. Society has always defended itself.
Show me the prison, Show me the jail, Show me the prisoner whose life has gone stale. And I'll show you a young man with so many reasons why And there, but for fortune, go you or I.
I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes to society.
No man should be judge in his own case.
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.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
The punishment can be remitted; the crime is everlasting.
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.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
A variety in punishment is of utility, as well as a proportion.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
