"Death penalty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the dishes followed one another—fowl with gravy, lobsters, mushrooms, salads, roast larks—many topics were handled: the best system of taxation, the advantages of the large system of land cultivation, the abolition of the death penalty. The sub-prefect did not forget to cite that charming witticism of a clever man: "Let Messieurs the ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... old religion upon the grounds that "It was unbecoming a Christian government to supply the infidels with the means of persevering in their errors." Another one of the Emperors, more zealous than his predecessors, decreed the death penalty against all persons discovered practicing any of the rites and ceremonies of the old religion. Thus the onslaught of Christian savagery obliterated the civilization of Greece and Rome, and inaugurated that long reign of intellectual night known as the Dark Ages, which, materially aiding in effecting ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... my mind a doubt, which has gone on increasing. A painful struggle has been going on in my mind, a cruel struggle—and if, as I was finishing, I labored under that emotion of which the President was speaking, if when I demanded the death penalty my voice was scarcely audible, it was because I was at the end of my struggle; because my conscience was on the point of winning the battle, and I made haste to finish, because I was afraid it would ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... death, her accusers might have said that he was defying the existing authorities; and possibly the charge of opposition to the Roman government might have been formulated, since power to inflict the death penalty had been taken from all Jewish tribunals; and moreover, the crime with which this woman was charged was not a capital offense under Roman law. Had He said that the woman should go unpunished or suffer only minor infliction, the crafty Jews could have charged ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... offence his tongue was to be bored with a hot iron. At length in 1658, the Federal Commissioners, sitting at Boston with Endicott as chairman, recommended capital punishment. It must be borne in mind that the general reluctance toward prescribing or inflicting the death penalty was much weaker then than now. On the statute-books there were not less than fifteen capital crimes, including such offences as idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, marriage within the Levitical degrees, "presumptuous sabbath-breaking," and cursing or smiting one's parents. ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... The death penalty in Brazil is generally commuted except in the case of negroes, but this time it was to be suffered ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... degree of jurisdiction, frequently that of "high, mean, and petty justice"—that is to say, the right of trying and settling a large variety of judicial matters among his tenants; his right of punishment extending in some cases even to the infliction of the death penalty. He had the right to receive certain payments upon every sale or lease of the lands of any inhabitant of his fief; he received fees upon sales of cattle, grain, wine, meat, and other articles within the limits of his lands; he ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... steal implied the right of private property. The Anabaptists denied that they were communists, but the leaders were bound over to keep the peace, some were fined and others banished. As persecuting measures almost always increase in severity, it was not long before the death penalty was denounced against the sectaries, and actually applied. In a polemic against the new sect entitled In Catabaptistarum Strophas Elenchus, [Sidenote: July 1527] Zwingli's only argument is a criticism of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... had been foisted upon the republicans was drugged and died, and Dessault, his medical attendant, died also—the suspicion being that both were poisoned. This miserable child, who had thus paid the death penalty for his king was none other, the pretender said, than the son of a rascally tailor, named Hervagault, who lived ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... be hoarded if there be need to spend it. I felt, and feel, this about others; and of course also about myself. This is one reason why I have always felt impatient contempt for the effort to abolish the death penalty on account of sympathy with criminals. I am willing to listen to arguments in favor of abolishing the death penalty so far as they are based purely on grounds of public expediency, although these arguments have never convinced me. But inasmuch ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... necessary," said Hanky severely, "that he should be brought up for poaching. He is a foreign devil, and as such your son is bound to fling him without trial into the Blue Pool. Why bring a smaller charge when you must inflict the death penalty on a more serious one? I have already told you that I shall feel it my duty to report the matter at headquarters, unless I am satisfied that the death penalty has ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Law inflicted the death penalty for the more grievous crimes, viz. for those which are committed against God, and for murder, for stealing a man, irreverence towards one's parents, adultery and incest. In the case of thief of other things it inflicted punishment by indemnification: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... personal lot to weaken the united Polish front, for the death penalty can affect us only physically. The sufferings undergone by our grandfathers and fathers, we will continue to endure and with the sincere conviction that we are serving a free, united, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... studies with sallies into the domain of politics, and as a result he developed marked Radical views which he held through life. His note-books show a splendid grasp of principles and a close attention to facts; they range from the enforcing of the death penalty for marauding to the details of cavalry-kit. His Spartan regime became famous in later years; even now he prescribed a strict rule, 'a cloak, a pair of shoes, two flannel shirts, and a piece of soap—these, wrapped up in an oil-skin, must go in ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore |
