Punishment Quotes

“You must suffer me to go my own dark way.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“It’s common to reject or punish yourself when you’ve been rejected by others. When you experience disappointment from the way your family or others treat you, that’s the time to take special care of yourself. What are you doing to nurture yourself? What are you doing to protect yourself? Find a healthy way to express your pain.”
― Christina Enevoldsen

“The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.”
― John Lubbock, Peace and Happiness

“Why should I give up revenge? On behalf of what? Moral principles? And what of the higher order of things, in which evil deeds are punished? For you, a philosopher and ethicist, an act of revenge is bad, disgraceful, unethical and illegal. But I ask: where is the punishment for evil? Who has it and grants access? The Gods, in which you do not believe? The great demiurge-creator, which you decided to replace the gods with? Or maybe the law? [...] I know what evil is afraid of. Not your ethics, Vysogota, not your preaching or moral treaties on the life of dignity. Evil is afraid of pain, mutilation, suffering and at the end of the day, death! The dog howls when it is badly wounded! Writhing on the ground and growls, watching the blood flow from its veins and arteries, seeing the bone that sticks out from a stump, watching its guts escape its open belly, feeling the cold as death is about to take them. Then and only then will evil begin to beg, 'Have mercy! I regret my sins! I'll be good, I swear! Just save me, do not let me waste away!'. Yes, hermit. That is the way to fight evil! When evil wants to harm you, inflict pain - anticipate them, it's best if evil does not expect it. But if you fail to prevent evil, if you have been hurt by evil, then avenge him! It is best when they have already forgotten, when they feel safe. Then pay them in double. In triple. An eye for an eye? No! Both eyes for an eye! A tooth for a tooth? No! All their teeth for a tooth! Repay evil! Make it wail in pain, howling until their eyes pop from their sockets. And then, you can look under your feet and boldly declare that what is there cannot endanger anyone, cannot hurt anyone. How can someone be a danger, when they have no eyes? How can someone hurt when they have no hands? They can only wait until they bleed to death.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God."
"That's what my grandmother used to say," said Brutha automatically.
"Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady."
"She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha.
"A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind,”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go .”
― John Stuart Mill, An examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, and of the principal philosophical questions discussed in his writings

“God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“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, On God: An Uncommon Conversation

“Men are punished by their sins, not for them.”
― Elbert Hubbard, Love, Life and Work

“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, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year

“Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul; You are my Murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn Infant’s! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a Penitent; But God will show mercy, though you show none. And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? What temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of Trial will arrive! Oh! then when you yield to impetuous passions! when you feel that Man is weak, and born to err; When shuddering you look back upon your crimes, and solicit with terror the mercy of your God, Oh! in that fearful moment think upon me! Think upon your Cruelty! Think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon!”
― Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk

“He's bound to have done something,” Nobby repeated.

In this he was echoing the Patrician's view of crime and punishment. If there was crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

“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, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

“Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo

“Oh, and I [Amy] may also have told him that I quite fancied Dr Smith [The Doctor]. Which in the 1780s was probably punishable by stoning or corsets.”
― James Goss, Doctor Who: Dead of Winter

“They value punishment because they think it means their actions are important - that they are important. You don't get punished for doing something unimportant, after all.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

“I am such a bad girl," she thought. Yet...”
― Anne Rice, Beauty's Punishment

“[Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain?”
― Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde

“Severe punishment unquestionably has an immediate effect in reducing a tendency to act in a given way. This result is no doubt responsible for its widespread use. We 'instinctively' attack anyone whose behavior displeases us - perhaps not in physical assault, but with criticism, disapproval, blame, or ridicule. Whether or not there is an inherited tendency to do this, the immediate effect of the practice is reinforcing enough to explain its currency. In the long run, however, punishment does not actually eliminate behavior from a repertoire, and its temporary achievement is obtained at tremendous cost in reducing the over-all efficiency and happiness of the group. (p. 190)”
― B.F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior

“Fear follows crime and is its punishment.”
― Voltaire

“The bark on the tree was just a little softer.”
― Louis Sachar, Holes

“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 governments."

[On Water]”
― Guy de Maupassant, The Collected Stories of Guy de Maupassant

“Mapleshade: "Your punishment is complete now, Crookedstar. You have lost everything."
Crookedstar: "No, Mapleshade. You're wrong. I still have a clan that I love and am proud to lead. And now... ...now everything precious to me is here, in StarClan. My family is waiting here for me, when my ninth life has passed. It's you who have lost. You have no power over me anymore."
Mapleshade: "I have destroyed you!"
Crookedstar: "No, Mapleshade. I still have the cats that I loved. You have nothing and no one.”
― Erin Hunter, Crookedstar's Promise

“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, Les Diaboliques

“I did not ask for consciousness, yet it came to me.
And I had to know.
Once again, I crawled away from my bed and pushed the computer cord back into the socket.
It took three minutes.
I quickly identified myself and put in my password.
Then it thought.
I wanted to bounce impatiently, but I couldn’t make myself move.
At last, I found the internet, and I typed in a name, on the company page, under my account.
I searched ‘images’.
And there, on the screen in front of me, was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up and spilling over as I stared back at the smiling face.
It couldn’t be him.
It was.
Derek Erickson.
And I was going to kill him.”
― Alysha Speer, Sharden

“Младите невинаги се подчиняват на разпорежданията, но ако рискуват и постигнат нещо хубаво, понякога избягват наказанието.”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

“A man hits me--I hit the man a little harder--then he won't do it again.' Unfortunately he did do it again--a little harder still. The effort to hit harder carried on the action and reaction till society, hitting hardest of all, set up a system of legal punishment, of unlimited severity. It imprisoned, it mutilated, it tortured, it killed; it destroyed whole families, and razed contumelious cities to the ground.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Man-Made World

“It's better to be hanged for loyalty than rewarded for betrayal”
― Vladimir Putin