The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Shyness is the prison of the heart.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
When you are younger you get blamed for crimes you never committed and when you're older you begin to get credit for virtues you never possessed. It evens itself out.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
There are dreadful punishments enacted against thieves; but it were much better to make such good provisions, by which every man might be put in a method how to live, and so to be preserved from the fatal necessity of stealing and dying for it.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.
Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions.
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.
Fast closed with double grills And triple gates–the cell To wicked souls is hell; But to a mind that's innocent 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.
The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.
Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline.
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up...I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was.
The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison walls.
I sometimes wish that people would put a little more emphasis upon the observance of the law than they do upon its enforcement.
It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations.
There is no greater punishment of wickedness that that it is dissatisfied with itself and its deeds.
Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.
Reality becomes a prison to those who can’t get out of it.
