Prison

Prison

Sourced

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 634.

• In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
  And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep.
  • Robert Burns, Epistle from Esopus to Maria in Chambers' Burns' Life and Work, Volume IV.

• Whene'er with haggard eyes I view
  This dungeon that I'm rotting in,
  I think of those companions true
  Who studied with me at the U-
  Niversity of Göttingen.
  • George Canning—Song. Of One Eleven Years in Prison. Found in The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. Also in Burlesque Plays and Poems, edited by Henry Morley.

• Prison'd in a parlour snug and small,
  Like bottled wasps upon a southern wall.
  • William Cowper, Retirement, line 493.

• "And a bird-cage, sir," said Sam. "Veels vithin veels, a prison in a prison."
  • Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers, Chapter XL.

• As if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.
  • Ezekiel. X. 10.

• In durance vile.
  • William Kendrick—Falstaff's Wedding, Act I, scene 2. Burke—Thoughts on the Present Discontent.

• That which the world miscalls a jail,
  A private closet is to me.

   *    *    *    *    *

Locks, bars, and solitude together met,
Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret.

• • Attributed to Sir Roger L'Estrange. Also to Lord Capel. Found in the New Foundling Hospital for Wit. (Ed. 1786), IV. 40, as a supplementary stanza. See Notes and Queries, April 10, 1909, p. 288.

• Stone walls do not a prison make,
  Nor iron bars a cage,
  Minds innocent and quiet take

 That for an hermitage.

• • Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison, IV.

• Doubles grilles à gros cloux,
  Triples portes, forts verroux,
  Aux âmes vraiment méchantes

Vous représentez l'enfer:
Mais aux âmes innocentes Vous n'etes que du bois, des pierres, du fer.

 Fast closed with double grills
   And triple gates—the cell
   To wicked souls is hell;
  But to a mind that's innocent
 'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

• • Pelisson—Written on the walls of his cell in the Bastile. (About 1661).

• Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
  Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
  Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;
  But life, being weary of these worldly bars,
  Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act I, scene 3, line 93.

• I have been studying how I may compare

This prison where I live unto the world:
And for because the world is populous And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.

• • William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act V, scene 5, line 1.