Punishment Quotes - page 21
There is a deep impression of awe produced by such a vast but silent crowd; we are at once conscious that the cause is terrible which can induce the unusual stillness. The issue of a trial on which hangs life or death, is indeed an appalling thing. We know that men are about to take away that which they cannot give-that a few words of human breath will deprive of breath one of the number for ever; and though we acknowledge that in this evil world punishment is the only security against crime, and that blood for blood has been a necessity from the beginning of time; still, we feel that the necessity is a dreadful one.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
I can conceive no punishment so dreadful as keeping perpetual watch on our words, lest they betray what they mean to conceal; to know no unguarded moment - no careless gaiety - to pine for the confidence which yet we dare not bestow - to tremble, lest that some hidden meaning lurk in a phrase which only our own sickly fancy could torture into bearing such - to have suspicion become a second nature - and to shrink every morning from the glad sunshine, for we know not what a day may bring forth : the wheel of Ixion were a tender mercy compared to such a state.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not the earth has it not the sea has it not and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.
John Ruskin
So look at this desire and its nature without thought which is always shaping sensations, pleasure and pain, reward and punishment. Then one understands, not verbally, nor intellectually, the whole causation of desire, the root of desire. The very perception of it, the subtle perception of it, that in itself is intelligence. And that intelligence will always act sanely and rationally in dealing with desire.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Enforced solitude, as in solitary confinement, is a terrible and disorienting punishment, but freely chosen solitude is an immense blessing. To be out of the rattle and clang of quotidian life, to be away from the garbage of other people's amusements and the overflow of their unwanted subjectivities, is the essential escape. Solitude is, beyond question, one of the worlds great gifts and an indispensable aid to creativity, no matter what level that creation may be hatched at.
Robert Hughes
With deep sighs and tears, he burst forth into the following complaint: – "O irreversible decrees of the Fates, that never swerve from your stated course! why did you ever advance me to an unstable felicity, since the punishment of lost happiness is greater than the sense of present misery?"
Geoffrey of Monmouth
The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?
Roger Ebert
