Quotes4study

Maison d'arret=--A jail, a prison.

French.

If someone were to harm my family or a friend or somebody I love, I would eat them. I might end up in jail for 500 years, but I would eat them.

Johnny Depp

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice. […] Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. [“Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” 1963.]

King Jr., Martin Luther.

Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.

Russ Feingold (born 2 March 1953

When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'.

Groucho Marx

"My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate."

- Unibomber Theodore Kaczynski, when asked in court what his current profession was

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.

Alfred Whitney Griswold

It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.

Howard Zinn

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,-- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1709-1784.     _Vanity of Human Wishes. Line 159._

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Alfred Whitney Griswold

And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing

what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions.

When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'.

About Humor

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. 1709-1784.     _Life of Johnson_ (Boswell). _Vol. ii. Chap. iii. 1759._

He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar=, _i.e._, he that will to jail, must to jail.

_Sc. Pr._

If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

Charles Bukowski

I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets.

Eugene V. Debs

Break into jail and claim police brutality.

Fortune Cookie

Mr. DePree also expects a "tremendous social change" in all workplaces.  "When

I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the

product.  Today it is drastically different, because of the social milieu.

It isn't unusual for a worker to arrive on his shift and have some family

problem that he doesn't know how to resolve.  The example I like to use is a

guy who comes in and says 'this isn't going to be a good day for me, my son

is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don't know how to raise bail.'

What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity, he has to know

how to raise bail."

-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's

   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988

Fortune Cookie

Use an accordion.  Go to jail.

        -- KFOG, San Francisco

Fortune Cookie

I shot a query into the net.

I haven't got an answer yet,        A posted message called me rotten

But seven people gave me hell        For ignoring mail I'd never gotten;

And said I ought to learn to spell;    An angry message asked me, Please

                    Don't send such drivel overseas;

A lawyer sent me private mail

And swore he'd slap my ass in jail --    One netter thought it was a hoax:

I'd mentioned Un*x in my gem        "Hereafter, post to net dot jokes!";

And failed to add the T and M;        Another called my grammar vile

                    And criticized my writing style.

Each day I scan each Subject line

In hopes the topic will be mine;

I shot a query into the net.

I haven't got an answer yet...

        -- Ed Nather

Fortune Cookie

The Least Successful Executions

    History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention.

The first performed in Sydney in Australia.  In 1803 three attempts were

made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels.  On the first two of these the rope

snapped, while on the third Mr. Samuels just hung there peacefully until he

and everyone else got bored.  Since he had proved unsusceptible to capital

punishment, he was reprieved.

    The most important British executioner was Mr. James Berry who

tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr. John Lee at Exeter Jail, but on each

occasion failed to get the trap door open.

    In recognition of this achievement, the Home Secretary commuted

Lee's sentence to "life" imprisonment.  He was released in 1917, emigrated

to America and lived until 1933.

        -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"

Fortune Cookie

Go directly to jail.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Fortune Cookie

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it

were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

        -- H. L. Mencken

Fortune Cookie

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel

a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.

        -- Dave Barry

Fortune Cookie

"And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what

the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions."

        -- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation

Fortune Cookie

And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing

what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail.  No exceptions.

        -- David Jones

Fortune Cookie

    We have some absolutely irrefutable statistics to show exactly why

you are so tired.

    There are not as many people actually working as you may have thought.

    The population of this country is 200 million.  84 million are over

60 years of age, which leaves 116 million to do the work.  People under 20

years of age total 75 million, which leaves 41 million to do the work.

    There are 22 million who are employed by the government, which leaves

19 million to do the work.  Four million are in the Armed Services, which

leaves 15 million to do the work.  Deduct 14,800,000, the number in the state

and city offices, leaving 200,000 to do the work.  There are 188,000 in

hospitals, insane asylums, etc., so that leaves 12,000 to do the work.

    Now it may interest you to know that there are 11,998 people in jail,

so that leaves just 2 people to carry the load. That is you and me, and

brother, I'm getting tired of doing everything myself!

Fortune Cookie

    The judge fined the jaywalker fifty dollars and told him if he was

caught again, he would be thrown in jail.  Fine today, cooler tomorrow.

Fortune Cookie

Use a pun, go to jail.

Fortune Cookie

The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.

        -- Wavy Gravy

Fortune Cookie

Coach: What would you say to a beer, Normie?

Norm:  Daddy wuvs you.

        -- Cheers, The Mail Goes to Jail</p>

Sam:  What'd you like, Normie?

Norm: A reason to live.  Gimme another beer.

        -- Cheers, Behind Every Great Man

Sam:  What will you have, Norm?

Norm: Well, I'm in a gambling mood, Sammy.  I'll take a glass of whatever

      comes out of that tap.

Sam:  Oh, looks like beer, Norm.

Norm: Call me Mister Lucky.

        -- Cheers, The Executive's Executioner

Fortune Cookie

"Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever! Give it up and maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you before, I don't care for her swag--you may have it. But her husband was rough on me--many times he was rough on me--and mainly he was the justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all. It ain't a millionth part of it! He had me _horsewhipped_!--horsewhipped in front of the jail, like a nigger!--with all the town looking on! _Horsewhipped_!--do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But I'll take it out of _her_."

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

"Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows!--they say he killed himself."

Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre

The only flaw in that argument is that there was no “Bolshevist danger” at that time, the Bolsheviki still being a powerless minority in the Soviets, and their leaders in jail or hiding.

John Reed     Ten Days That Shook the World

I do not like "but yet," it does allay / The good precedence; fie upon "but yet:" / "But yet" is as a jailer to bring forth / Some monstrous malefactor.

_Ant. and Cleop._, ii. 5.

I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

"'Yes, master, and I've never been in it much.' (I had come out of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have been for something else; but it warn't.)

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

Life is the jailer, death the angel sent to draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

_Lowell._

Life is the jailer of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is death. What we call life is a journey to death, and what we call death is a passport to life.

_Colton._

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.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public wrongdoing--and which is always its heaviest and longest punishment--was still far off. So felons were not lodged and fed better than soldiers, (to say nothing of paupers,) and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavor of their soup. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in, and a potman was going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frowzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

When he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said to the sergeant of the guard, as he handed it to him, "Take three men and conduct this creature to jail."

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The great hotels, where the speculators still did a thriving business, were surrounded by Red Guards, and the speculators thrown into jail. (See App. XI, Sect. 8)...

John Reed     Ten Days That Shook the World

"Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a going fur to tell you my life like a song, or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you've got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

"That's it, Pip," said Joe; "and they took his till, and they took his cash-box, and they drinked his wine, and they partook of his wittles, and they slapped his face, and they pulled his nose, and they tied him up to his bedpust, and they giv' him a dozen, and they stuffed his mouth full of flowering annuals to prewent his crying out. But he knowed Orlick, and Orlick's in the county jail."

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

Secrets make a dungeon of the heart and a jailer of its owner.

_Amer. Pr._

Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where suppliants for Mr. Jaggers's notice were lingering about as usual, and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with some three hours on hand. I consumed the whole time in thinking how strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening, I should have first encountered it; that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded but not gone; that, it should in this new way pervade my fortune and advancement. While my mind was thus engaged, I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her. I wished that Wemmick had not met me, or that I had not yielded to him and gone with him, so that, of all days in the year on this day, I might not have had Newgate in my breath and on my clothes. I beat the prison dust off my feet as I sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress, and I exhaled its air from my lungs. So contaminated did I feel, remembering who was coming, that the coach came quickly after all, and I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr. Wemmick's conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand waving to me.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

"There's a pretty fellow, now," he banteringly laughed, standing in the ship's bows, "there's a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes of Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering their boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes, and sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's wick into; aye, we all know these things; but look ye, here's a Crappo that is content with our leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, and is content too with scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there. Poor devil! I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let's make him a present of a little oil for dear charity's sake. For what oil he'll get from that drugged whale there, wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in a condemned cell. And as for the other whale, why, I'll agree to get more oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours, than he'll get from that bundle of bones; though, now that I think of it, it may contain something worth a good deal more than oil; yes, ambergris. I wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It's worth trying. Yes, I'm for it;" and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.

Herman Melville     Moby Dick; or The Whale

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the looking- glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my stool.

Charlotte Bronte     Jane Eyre

Du choc des esprits jaillissent les etincelles=--When great spirits clash, sparks fly about.

_Fr. Pr._

The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in this luckless captive.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it was seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's conscience.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)     The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

When Jean Valjean, on the evening of the very day when Javert had arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, had escaped from the town jail of M. sur M., the police had supposed that he had betaken himself to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost, and everything disappears in this belly of the world, as in the belly of the sea. No forest hides a man as does that crowd. Fugitives of every sort know this. They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save. The police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what they have lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Javert was summoned to Paris to throw light on their researches. Javert had, in fact, rendered powerful assistance in the recapture of Jean Valjean. Javert's zeal and intelligence on that occasion had been remarked by M. Chabouillet, secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Angles. M. Chabouillet, who had, moreover, already been Javert's patron, had the inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris. There Javert rendered himself useful in divers and, though the word may seem strange for such services, honorable manners.

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul's bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity of people standing about smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred that the trials were on.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman. The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman on his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt that the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would avenge it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into the studious youth of England, without laying themselves open to severe punishment. For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at the kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before going on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail should pounce upon me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trousers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead of night. I had cut my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's teeth, and I twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles, as I devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory circumstance when I should be haled before the Judges.

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be puzzled how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night."

Charles Dickens     Great Expectations

The mention of Bernardo de la Vega's _Pastor de Iberia_ shows that the sixth chapter of _Don Quixote_ cannot have been written before 1591. In the prologue Cervantes describes his masterpiece as being "just what might be begotten in a jail"; on the strength of this passage, it has been thought that he conceived the story, and perhaps began writing it, during one of his terms of imprisonment at Seville between 1597 and 1602. Within a few weeks of its publication at Madrid, three pirated editions of _Don Quixote_ were issued at Lisbon; a second authorized edition, imperfectly revised, was hurried out at Madrid; and another reprint appeared at Valencia with an _aprobación_ dated 18th July 1605. With the exception of Alemán's _Guzmán de Alfarache_, no Spanish book of the period was more successful. Modern criticism is prone to regard _Don Quixote_ as a symbolic, didactic or controversial work intended to bring about radical reforms in church and state. Such interpretations did not occur to Cervantes' contemporaries, nor to Cervantes himself. There is no reason for rejecting his plain statement that his main object was to ridicule the romances of chivalry, which in their latest developments had become a tissue of tiresome absurdities. It seems clear that his first intention was merely to parody these extravagances in a short story; but as he proceeded the immense possibilities of the subject became more evident to him, and he ended by expanding his work into a brilliant panorama of Spanish society as it existed during the 16th century. Nobles, knights, poets, courtly gentlemen, priests, traders, farmers, barbers, muleteers, scullions and convicts; accomplished ladies, impassioned damsels, Moorish beauties, simple-hearted country-girls and kindly kitchen-wenches of questionable morals--all these are presented with the genial fidelity which comes of sympathetic insight. The immediate vogue of _Don Quixote_ was due chiefly to its variety of incident, to its wealth of comedy bordering on farce, and perhaps also to its keen thrusts at eminent contemporaries; its reticent pathos, its large humanity, and its penetrating criticism of life were less speedily appreciated. Entry: CERVANTES

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 7 "Cerargyrite" to "Charing Cross"     1910-1911

Index: