Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
Mark Twain in The Gorky Incident
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Be Ruthless The Law
Be punishment heavier than
The benefit caused by the wrong.
Be the punishment severer than
The pain caused by the crime.
Be the punishment double
For wrongs of the custodian of laws.
Ruthlessness is the characteristic
Of the law of enforcement.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.
quote by Harriet Martineau
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Our civil laws will never be supple enough to fit the immense and changing variety of facts. Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.
quote by Marguerite Yourcenar
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Laws without punishment are like bells with no clackers.
An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself.
quote by Irwin Shaw
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The principle inherent in the clause that prohibits pointless infliction of excessive punishment when less severe punishment can adequately achieve the same purposes invalidates the punishment.
quote by William J. Brennan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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No remorse story poem
No remorse
Beneath the waves my lover lies.
They search for her without success.
I see suspicion in their eyes
They do not know but some still guess
I loved her well and faithfully.
I thought she was the perfect wife.
Behind my back she betrayed me.
I had the right to take her life.
Or would have had long years ago
The price of infidelity
was to be slain and justly so.
Though today’s laws do not agree.
I could not kill her openly.
Though she had earned the punishment.
I had to plan it carefully
and see no reason to repent.
My conscience does not bother me.
I still sleep peacefully at nights.
She feeds the fish beneath the sea.
I wish them hearty appetites.
I have no doubt that in due course
the tides will wash her bones ashore.
I do believe I had just cause.
She won’t betray me any more
D.N.A may identify
to whom the naked bones belong
but never how she came to die
Nor will they prove that it was wrong.
It could have been an accident.
Or a guilt induced suicide.
The only thing that I resent
That I had no choice but to hide
The punishment she well deserved.
Instead of acting openly
I think that justice has been served.
Though no one knows the truth but me.
My lover lies beneath the waves
I visit her quite frequently
as other people visit graves
I walk the shore beside the sea.
22-Aug-08
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poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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Laws XIII
Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"
And he answered:
You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.
But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?
What of the cripple who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers?
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?
poem by Khalil Gibran
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Man struggles with men.
Punishment is to spend the anger
And is not to set right the victim.
Laws are to augment the ruler
And is not to serve the subjects.
Man struggles with men to exist.
12.10.2012
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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The Inner Voice - Conscience
Laws on earth can be made, unmade;
Laws can be bettered or worsened by change;
Laws may be just or unjust and never perfect;
Laws can be changed for comfort and convenience.
Laws may change from time to time;
Laws cannot reflect truth always;
Laws depend on the constituent makers;
Laws can never be ideal for all times!
But the inner Voice -the Conscience is static;
It always speaks the truth irrevocably;
It is not transmutable anytime;
It can never lie ever even by chance.
The Inner Voice scores over laws always;
One's conscience always tells what is right;
Freedom of man's conscience is paramount;
Laws to stifle the Inner Voice are simply futile!
Laws are needed but must be just and fair;
Laws aren't needed to fetter the conscience;
Laws are man-made and transmutable;
Conscience is God-given, remaining the same in everyone!
Obey the laws when they are fair and just;
Heed to your Conscience, God's law-maker within!
Copyright by Dr John Celes 14-02-12
poem by John Celes
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Ch 08 On Rules For Conduct In Life - Maxim 66
Whoever does not betake himself to the path of rectitude in consequence of the castigations of this world will fall under eternal punishment in the next. Allah the most high has said: And we will cause them to taste the nearer punishment of this world besides the more grievous punishment of the next.
Admonition is the address of superiors and then fetters.
If they give advice and thou listenest not, they put thee in fetters.
What does that make you?
If you work in capital punishment what does that make you?
If you kill a murderer I think that’s murder too.
If you hurt some one would you expect it to be returned?
But from your point of view that hurt would have been earned.
I agree they should be punished, I really, really do,
But I also think we should help them to get through.
Do you really consider all of their concerns?
Or do you think: murder, now it’s their turn.
Murder is an intentional killing in the laws sight,
Just because capital punishment is in the law doesn’t make it right.
It’s just like a policeman breaking the law,
And the authorities turn a blind eye lacking awe.
If they are not justified to their discrepancies,
Do you think our crime sentences really should be?
We should be punished for our major illegal wrongs,
But if they aren’t then justice in society does not belong.
Because if we as a society lets capital murder carry through,
Just sit and ask yourself what does that really make you?
poem by Amy Fifita
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Just and Equal Punishment
Getting rid of the culprits,
Does little to undo those misdeeds done.
Assigning the crime doers,
To prison cells to get three meals a day...
Free cable and educational opportunities,
To rehabilitate back into a crazed society...
Is not just and equal punishment.
Just and equal punishment includes,
Being threatened by creditors on a daily basis.
Or being passed over for a raise,
As one's boss waves and drives away...
In a new Mercedes.
Just and equal punishment,
Is a stripping of one's respect and identity.
Not dollars stashed away collecting interests.
And kept as seed money to invest,
In the adding of more theft to the decadence.
Just and equal punishment,
Would be the trading of places...
With those that have been deceived.
And they do this until those victimized,
Have been satisfied.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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The Laws of God, The Laws of Man
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
poem by Alfred Edward Housman
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All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.
quote by Joseph De Maistre
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Fines are preferable to imprisonment and other types of punishment because they are more efficient. With a fine, the punishment to offenders is also revenue to the State.
quote by Gary Becker
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
quote by Jeremy Bentham
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.
quote by Ginghis Han
Submitted by Simona Enache
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The way the terrorist is trained to operate, especially the suicide terrorists, makes punishment and the threat of punishment far less valuable to those who would prevent the crime.
quote by John Ashcroft
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Taking Liberties too far
The lack of enforced discipline.
Is where our troubles all begin.
The evidence is plain to see.
Things are not as they ought to be
Some legal technicality
allows the guilty to go free.
They thus evade due punishment
although they are not innocent.
It’s much the same in homes and schools
Where children disobey the rules.
Without regard to consequence
because they see no evidence.
They will be chastised in due course.
There is no point in having laws
which aren’t enforced impartially.
Applied to all men equally.
A civilised society
which fails to enforce it’s own laws.
Will slide into sheer anarchy.
The lack of discipline the cause.
The time has come: We must review
exactly what the law should do.
To deter those who break the rules
If we do not then we are fools.
08/10/2009
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poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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