C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Retribution
The sword is ever suspended.
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
O heaven, that such companions thou ’ldst unfold, and put in every honest hand a whip to lash the rascals naked through the world.
God’s mill grinds slow, but sure.
His enemies shall lick the dust.
Sin let loose speaks punishment at hand.
Nemesis is one of God’s handmaids.
A bad ending follows a bad beginning.
“One soweth and another reapeth,” is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.
Old age seizes upon an ill-spent youth like fire upon a rotten house.
Heaven never defaults. The wicked are sure of their wages, sooner or later.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
Heaven often regulates effects by their causes, and pays the wicked what they have deserved.
He whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an extra sense.
Let fierce contending nations know what dire effects from civil discord flow.
Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays opens the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.
In vain we attempt to clear our conscience by affecting to compensate for fraud or cruelty by acts of strict religious homage towards God.
Nothing is more common than for great thieves to ride in triumph when small ones are punished. But let wickedness escape as it may, at the law it never fails of doing itself justice; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
My lord cardinal (Cardinal Richelieu), there is one fact which you seem to have entirely forgotten. God is a sure paymaster. He may not pay at the end of every week or month or year; but I charge you, remember that He pays in the end.
Nemesis is lame; but she is of colossal stature, like the gods, and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.
Society is like the echoing hills. It gives back to the speaker his words; groan for groan, song for song. Wouldest thou have thy social scenes to resound with music? then speak ever in the melodious strains of truth and love. “With what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.”
The world cannot afford to damn its sinners, nor will it be saved without their help. Humanity is one, and not till Lazarus is cured of his sores will Dives be safe. Whoever will thrust Megdalen into the pit will find that he has dropped with her into the flames the key that should have opened heaven for him, and assuredly shall he remain outside until she, her purification completed, shall take pity on him and bring it thence.
The essence of justice is mercy. Making a child suffer for wrong-doing is merciful to the child. There is no mercy in letting the child have its own will, plunging headlong to destruction with the bits in its mouth. There is no mercy to society nor to the criminal if the wrong is not repressed and the right vindicated. We injure the culprit who comes up to take his proper doom at the bar of justice, if we do not make him feel that he has done a wrong thing. We may deliver his body from the prison, but not at the expense of justice nor to his own injury.