Robert Graves Quotes

The pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool.

I forbid that any one be killed or hung for any fault but his eyes shall be torn out or his testicles cut off. And this command shall not be violated under penalty of a fine in full to me.

Until 1513, women convicted of adultery in Nuremberg were buried alive. After that, they were drowned. Schmidt advocated that they should be beheaded for a quicker, more merciful death. He got his way even though critics maintained that weak women might faint and he might be obliged to finish them off on the ground. Consequently, Schmidt took the precaution of seating the condemned woman in a chair and beheading her with his sword from behind.

i was momentarily sidetracked by the vision of Eric herding a cow into a trailer and driving it to the shoulder of the the interstate and shooing it into the trees.

On the gallows tree, all men are brothers.

I’d never seen anything like it. First a trial, then a few murders, then dancing. Life goes on. Or, in this case, death continues.

The short conversation that follows eventually led to a tree religion. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree and led a clean decent and upstanding life could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper.

The questioners had that beautiful detachment and devotion to stern justice of men dealing in death without being in any danger of it.

I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.

We can plant a house, we can build a tree.

What's the matter?'' She immediately started laughin. ''What's the mattter? Everything is the matter! Rocks! Trees! Atoms! Even anteaters! Everything is the matter!

Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.

It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

The execution of William Bonin was not the traditional gas chamber of the past. That has been ruled cruel and unusual. Instead, we have something that seems very kind and benign and technical; the injection of chemicals, Nazi-style.

The only way a no-legged leopard could hurt you is if it fell out of a tree onto your head.

One area of law more than any other besmirches the constitutional vision of human dignity. . . . The barbaric death penalty violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its obligation to respect dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by emulating his murderer. Capital punishment's fatal flaw is that it treats people as objects to be toyed with and discarded. . . . One day the Court will outlaw the death penalty. Permanently.

The best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death.

Ill try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.

Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing 'Embraceable You' in spats.

I call it... the hot dog tree, because... it's a hot dog tree.

With respect to the death penalty, I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. That day will be a great day for our country, for it will be a great day for our Constitution.

"Write that down," the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence.

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

Your mother all but accused me of something that is, among my kind, the highest crime a man can commit. There is no trial, only punishment, because it is considered better to let an innocent man die than let a guilty one live." (Page 79.)