Quotes about Punishment

This feature of Israelite law stands in sharp contrast to many ancient law codes where certain thefts by certain people were punishable by death. Indeed, it contrasts with British law until fairly recent times (people were hanged for sheep-stealing in Britain until the nineteenth century). On the other hand, as mentioned above, theft of a person for gain (kidnapping) was a capital offence in Israel (21:16; Deut. 24:7). Stealing a human life was different from stealing property.

If we wish to be happy, monsieur, we must never comprehend duty; for, as soon as we comprehend it, it is implacable. One would say that it punishes you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you for it; for it puts you into a hell where you feel God at your side.

Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence.

and if you fall as Lucifer fell, you fall in flames! And so it must be, for so it is written on the doorway to Paradise, that those who falter and those who fall must pay the price!

Release is not the same as liberation. You get out of jail, all right, but you never stop being condemned.

Liberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence. That

The galleys make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please.

Let us have compassion on the chastised. Alas! Who are we ourselves? Who am I who now address you? Who are you who are listening to me? And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were born? The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a recaptured offender against divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so made, that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment.

Work is the law; whoever spurns it as tiresome will have it as punishment

And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.

We have no idea any more what it means to feel guilty. The communists have the excuse that Stalin misled them, murdurers have the excuse that their mothers didn't love them. And suddenly you come out and say: there is no excuse. No one could be more innocent in his soul and conscience than Oedipus, and yet he punished himself when he saw what he had done.

Our first experience of God is so important, we either experience Him as the police guard that wants to punish or as Creative Love that awaits.