“Disgrace does not consist in the punishment, but in the crime.”
Non nella pena,
Nel delitto è la infamia.
Antigone, I, 3; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 148.
Original
Non nella pena, Nel delitto è la infamia.
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Vittorio Alfieri 11
Italian dramatist and poet 1749–1803Related quotes
Salon interview (2000)
Context: In the old movies, yes, there always was the happy ending and order was restored. As it is in Shakespeare's plays. It's no disgrace to, in the end, restore order. And punish the wicked and, in some way, reward the righteous.
Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. III : The Master, p. 70
Context: Justice in no wise consists in meting out to another that exact measure of reward or punishment which we think and decree his merit, or what we call his crime, which is more often merely his error, deserves. The justice of the father is not incompatible with forgiveness by him of the errors and offences of his child. The Infinite Justice of God does not consist in meting out exact measures of punishment for human frailties and sins. We are too apt to erect our own little and narrow notions of what is right and just, into the law of justice, and to insist that God shall adopt that as His law; to measure off something with our own little tape-line, and call it God's law of justice. Continually we seek to ennoble our own ignoble love of revenge and retaliation, by misnaming it justice.
1770s, Boston Massacre trial (1770)
Context: It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.
But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
July 28, 1788, p. 107.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)
Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 164.
Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the Destitute and Criminal Classes (1868).
“The certainty of punishment, even more than its severity, is the preventive of crime.”
Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 456.
Section V, p. 13
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)