Punishment Quotes

You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction—no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy’s disgust.

~ Jonathan Franzen

In their silence they continued both to protect me and to punish me. The memory of that night was now the only tie between us, eclipsing everything else.

~ Jhumpa Lahiri

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.

~ Steve Allen

Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governm

~ Guy De Maupassant

What sort of a god are you, my Lord? Your punishments seem barbaric to me. Either that or we are more god-like and you’re merely human-like.

~ Theguywiththebrokenpromise

The survival of religion is on the basis of torture and punishment, end of torture is end of religion.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

Every society has the criminals that it deserves.

~ H. Havelock Ellis

Wilson had been killed by everybody. It was this that made his death special, the children had been told. It was justice, it was all the people showing how much they hated this crime. Killing was justice when everybody joined in.

~ Barry Unsworth

She looked at them with shining eyes. Her chin went up. She said: You regard it as impossible that a sinner should be struck down by the wrath of God! I do not! The judge stroked his chin. He murmured in a slightly ironic voice: My dear lady, in my experience of ill-doing, Providence leaves the work of conviction and chastisement to us mortals-and the process is often fraught with difficulties. There are no short cuts.

~ Agatha Christie

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

~ Voltaire

But to punish and not to restore, that is the greatest of all offences.

~ Alan Paton

They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage.

~ Jonathan Swift

Whatever criticism we may have for Jonah, at least it can be said that Jonah was consistent. This legalistic, over-judgmental, young prophet will consistently proscribe the most severe form of punishment for the guilty--even when the guilty party is himself. The young Jonah hijacks written Torah to condemn everyone--even himself.

~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Moreover, they who returned, if any, would be flogged, as seemed proper, after due examination. And though the news of their beatings might help all others to hesitation, ere they did foolishly, in like fashion, yet was the principle of the flogging not on this base, which would be both improper and unjust; but only that the one in question be corrected to the best advantage for his own well-being; for it is not meet that any principle of correction should shape to the making of human signposts of pain for the benefit of others; for in verity, this were to make one pay the cost of many's learning; and each should owe to pay only so much as shall suffice for the teaching of his own body and spirit. And if others profit thereby, this is but accident, however helpful. And this is wisdom, and denoteth now that a sound Principle shall prevent Practice from becoming monstrous.

~ William Hope Hodgson

The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly expiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will shew that this utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the shedding of blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty blood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder of one of his righteous servants is like sacrificing a mangy sheep or an ox with the rinderpest: it calls down divine wrath instead of appeasing it. In doing it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own revenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves; and cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation.

~ George Bernard Shaw

They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.

~ Arundhati Roy

I watch him go, and wonder if being good isn't its own punishment as much as it's supposed to be its own reward.

~ Seanan Mcguire

Now everything that you do is written in red or black in Angel Gabriel's book. Not for everyone is this record kept, but only for those who have taken a position of responsibility. There is a Law of Sins, and if you do not fulfil all your obligations, you will pay.

~ G.i. Gurdjieff

I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished for our sins as much as we are punished by our sins.

~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

People who excuse their faults and claim they didn't deserved to be punished - there are lots of them. But those who don't excuse their faults and admit they didn't deserve to be spared - they are few.

~ Zhuangzi

Comfort came in and stood with an appearance of guilt and shame. Her head bent, her eyes soaked with tears, her hands and legs, vibrating like a guiter string as perspiration covered her entire body, she felt like disappearing into the thin air, maybe to another mind creating world.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

And in the sin of wantingalways to be right, the punishmentis knowing it isn't possible.

~ Jennifer Clarvoe

She was a logical child, as far as children go. She did not understand how such a nice, kind, good God as the one they preyed to, could condemn the whole earth for sinfulness and flood it, or condemn his only Son to a disgusting death on behalf of everyone. This death did not seem to have done much good.

~ A.s. Byatt

...when it comes time for punishment for our sins, surely it's only the person who's done wrong who's expected to pay?Sister Agnes smiled, Not even them, if they've accepted the Savior.

~ Elizabeth Ludwig

Men are punished by their sins, not for them.

~ Elbert Hubbard

I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad—that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good—for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43—why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate.

~ Norman Mailer

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

~ Lauren Oliver

Punishing a person for the wrongs of another makes about as much sense as throwing up to enjoy the meal a second time.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

To punish someone for your own mistakes or for the consequences of your own actions, to harm another by shifting blame that is rightly yours; this is a wretched and cowardly sin.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

We’re here to execute a murderer,” Zil said, pointing at Hunter. “We are bringing justice in the name of all normals.”“There’s no justice without a trial,” Astrid said.Zil grinned. He spread his hands. “We had a trial, Astrid. And this chud scum was found guilty of murdering a normal.“The penalty,” he added, “is death.”Astrid turned to face the mob. “If you do this, you’ll never forgive yourselves.”“We’re hungry,” a voice cried, and was immediately echoed by others.“You’re going to murder a boy in a church?” Astrid demanded, pointing toward the church. “A church? In God’s house?”Zil could see that those words had an effect. There were some nervous looks.“You will never wash the stain of this off your hands,” Astrid cried. “If you do this, you will never be able to forget it. What do you think your parents would say?”“There are no parents in the FAYZ. No God, either,” Zil said. “There’s just humans trying to stay alive, and freaks taking everything for themselves.

~ Michael Grant

Nonsense. Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older, and then before you know it, they're grown.

~ J.m. Barrie

Whoever fails in the consideration generally due to the interests and feelings of others, not being compelled by some more imperative duty, or justified by allowable self-preference, is a subject of moral disapprobation for that failure, but not for the cause of it, nor for the errors, merely personal to himself, which may have remotely led to it. In like manner, when a person disables himself, by conduct purely self-regarding, from the performance of some definite duty incumbent on him to the public, he is guilty of a social offence. No person ought to be punished simply for being drunk; but a soldier or a policeman should be punished for being drunk on duty.

~ John Stuart Mill

punishment had not been spared--with best results in patience and purification

~ George Macdonald

The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Extreme civilization robs crime of its frightful poetry, and prevents the writer from restoring it. That would be too dreadful, say those good souls who want everything to be prettified, even the horrible. In the name of philanthropy, imbecile criminologists reduce the punishment, and inept moralists the crime, and what is more they reduce the crime only in order to reduce the punishment. Yet the crimes of extreme civilization are undoubtedly more atrocious than those of extreme barbarism, by virtue of their refinement, of the corruption they imply and of their superior degree of intellectualism. (A Woman's Vengeance)

~ Jules Barbey D'aurevilly

I stood behind the man’s chair, my blade at his throat. “Why do you do it?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer. “Kill people, and blow up buildings, and sell drugs?” It was what they all did. Committed crimes. That was why I killed them. “You’re a criminal, a terrorist, a danger. And I have been asked to take you out.” I told him. I was legend now, yet he asked the same question all the others did. “What is your name?” My sensitive ears tuned out the slit as my sword cut his neck. I walked around the chair to see his face. I watched as his eyes–slowly at first–changed from blue to milky white. His skin went pale. And as I heard him take his last breath, I ducked in so my lips hovered at his ear, and whispered, “My name, is Sharden.

~ Alysha Speer

All attempts at law, all religion, all ethical norms might be nothing more than attempts by the weak to restrain the strong. Then, within the law, arise the new strong, who subvert the law for their own ends of power and family interest, leaving the old strong outside their circle to pursue the waiting possibilities which they call crime. The weak, the cowardly, the decent ones, live between these groups.

~ George Zebrowski

A curse burns bright on crime.

~ Aeschylus

Sloane wasn't interested. As a police officer he was concerned with crime, not punishment.

~ Catherine Aird

there used to be, dirtside, a legal defenses called diminished capacity and not guilty by reason on insanity. These concepts would bewilder a Loonie. In Luna City a man would necessarily be of diminished mental capacity to even think about rape; to carry one out would be the strongest possible proof of insanity - but among Loonies such mental disorders would not gain a rapist any sympathy. loonies do not psychoanalyze a rapist; they kill him. Now. Fast. Brutally.

~ Robert A. Heinlein