Quotes About Imprisonment

Susan Rosenberg was a member of the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, and The Family. She conspired to kill cops, blow up buildings, and stage an armed robbery of the Brinks truck in Nanuet, New York. Sentenced to fifty-eight years in prison for felony murder and possession of more than 700 pounds of explosives, Rosenberg was released from prison by President Clinton on his last day in office. Just

My heart was acting like a prisoner in the Tower of London, banging against the walls. I had to hold my hand against it. I was afraid it would escape.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

Where I a pris'ner chain'd, scarce freely drawThe air imprison'd also, close and damp,Unwholsome draught; but here I feel amends,The breath of heav'n fresh blowing, pure and sweet,With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.Milton'sSampson Agonistes.

Griff lowered his window as Turner drove through the gates of the federal prison camp that had been his home for the past five years. The area in which he'd been incarcerated was classified minimum security, but it was still prison.

The sense in which Goethe was right: Continued life means expectation, Death is the abolition of choice. The more choice is limited, the closer we are to death. The greatest cruelty is to curtail expectations without taking away life completely. A life term in prison is like that. So is citizenship in some countries. The best solution would be to live as if the ordinary expectations had not been removed, not from day to day, blindly. But that requires immense self-mastery.

The sun was shut up in a cold bottle.

I am giving up the violin. I guess I will never reach my object through it," to raise my spirit from the earth, to leave the body of this death. I was very stubborn. I wanted to raise myself into another world. My life and deeds were a prison.

confined as he may be, he none the less still preserves in his heart the sweet sensation of freedom, and the knowledge that he can quit this prison whenever he wishes.

The poor child felt like a little bird that is placed in a glittering cage.

I've learnt something more. The expectation of a body can last as long as any hope. Like mine expecting yours. As soon as they gave you two life sentences, I stopped believing in their time.

Only those who have stood within the bars and heard the din of devils and the appalling sounds of despair can imagine the horrors of the hold of a convict ship.

It has been argued that imprisonment is a more effective deterrent with white-collar than with traditional offenders because the stigma of prison is more intensely felt by respectable middle- and upper-class people.

What a fool, quoth he, am I, thus to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.

But all I could think of was taking some books to read in jail. I held everybody up, choosing which ones to take.

They were called "rooms," but it was still a cell. A room you could leave when you chose to do so; a cell you could not.

Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.

All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.

I stagnated in prison a long time, and I have wasted most of my life.

You can't expect someone who has been in prison his whole entire life to turn around and become a sweet guy who writes books and walks his dog and has a normal life.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experience. No one can eliminate prejudices--just recognize them.

And there are plenty of ways to self-destruct: marrying or having a baby in a way that imprisons one in a narrow, prescribed role; abusing drugs or alcohol; becoming physically or mentally incapacitated; joining a cult or organization that offers security and answers; or suicide.

Once, she closed the book abruptly and said with annoyance, "That's enough." "Why?" "Because I've had it, it's always the same story: inside something small there's something even smaller that wants to leap out, and outside something large there's always someting larger that wants to keep it a prisoner.

I wrote my book to free myself from it, not to be its prisoner.