Quotes About Imprisonment

Magistrates often condemn criminals to be kept in prison or in chains. They ought not to do this, for such punishments are forbidden: prisons are for restraining people, not for punishing them (Justinian's Digest 48.19.8.9).

Pervenche glissait dans un trou profond et sombre. Ou plutôt, c'était son vieux rêve d'un boyau perforant la terre dans lequel elle rampait, les coudes serrées contre ses flacs, les genoux écorchés, avec juste assez de place pour pouvoir avancer d'une ondulation douloureuse qu'elle ne savait plus si elle avançait ou si elle reculait. Elle savait plus depuis combien de temps elle était enfermée dans cette chambre.»

Missy shoved the thoughts and feelings down into their prison of the glass jar. Only once the lid was sealed tight did she release her breath.

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.

il étouffe - le monde se couche sur lui - et l'étouffe - il est prisonnier - coincé par ses promesses … on lui demande des comptes … En face de lui … une machine à compter - une machine à écrire des lettres d'amour - une machine à souffrir - le saisit … s'accroche à lui … Pierre dis-moi la vérité

Among some tossed-out books of my daughter's which I rescued...was one too awful to live. I returned it to the trash, resisting the urge to say a few parting words. All day long the thought of its mingling with chicken bones and olive pits nagged at me. Half a dozen times I removed it and replaced it, like an executioner with scruples about capital punishment. Finally I put it on a high shelf where I wouldn't have to see it. Life imprisonment.

What numbs us imprisons us.

they told me of color, that it was an illusion of the eye, an event in the perceiver's mind, not in the object; they told me that color had no reality; indeed, they told me that color did not inhere in a physical body any more than pain was in a needle. And then they imprisoned me in darkness; and though there was no color there, I still was black, and they still were white; and for that, they bound and gagged me.

Let us recall the boys and girls who had the nerve to write poetry and create works of art, and the adults who cared enough about life to debate philosophy, treat the ill and share their meager belongings all in a prison expressly designed to crush their spirit.

A golden cage is still a cage.

How do you bear it?" he said. My eyes gave off a faint light, and by it I could see his face, It was a surprise to realise that he was waiting for an answer. I believed I had one. I thought of another dim room, with another prisoner. He had been a craftsman also. On the foundation of his knowledge, civilisation had been built. Prometheus' words deep-running as roots, had waited in me all this time. "We bear it as best we can," I said.

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

Thus like a Captive in an Isle confin'd, Man walks at large, a Pris'ner of the Mind

It's like living in the Arabian Nights. Being the favourite in the harem. But the one perfume you really want is freedom.

Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it, I still think I can escape.

Nadie, desde fuera de ella, puede imaginar lo que es la vida en una prisión. Uno piensa que, bueno, al menos tendrá horas para leer y pensar, y que el tiempo no pasará tan mal. Pero pasa terriblemente mal. Con una exasperante lentitud.

My only happiness is when I sleep. When I wake, the nightmare begins. I feel cast on a desert island, imprisoned, condemned, and I know not what crime it is for.

They did not kiss. They could not. How can you mercilessly imprison all natural sexual instinct for twenty years and then not expect the prisoner to be racked by sobs when the doors are thrown open?

In his eyes, as in the eyes of all Forsytes, the pleasure of seeing these beautiful creatures in a state of captivity far outweighed the inconvenience of imprisonment to beasts whom God had so improvidently placed in a state of freedom! It was for the animals' good, removing them at once from the countless dangers of open air and exercise. Indeed, it was doubtful what wild animals were made for but tobe shut up in cages! The Man of Property, p. 191

It was as if his spirit were in prison. It would have been nice, indeed, to be that water, never staying, passing, passing; or wind, touching everything, never caught. To be able to do nothing without hurting someone - that was what was so ghastly. If only one were like a flower, that just sprang up and lived its life all to itself, and died. But whatever he did, or said now, would be like telling lies, or else being cruel. The only thing was to keep away from people.

As Mike Roberts watched Tommy enter the building, he could not imagine that the boy was taking his last steps in the free world. The rest of his life would be behind prison walls.

He made a mistake, one that would send him to death row and eventually cost him his freedom for life.

It has taken me years to convince her that there are thousands of innocent people locked away.

You see, Mr. Snowden, the Constitution says, quite clearly, that you cannot imprison a poor person for failing to pay his debts. I don't expect you to know this because you work for a bunch of crooks. However, trust me on this, the federal judges understand it because they've read the Constitution, most of them anyway. Debtors' prisons are illegal. Ever heard of the Equal Protection Clause?