Injustice

“ Injustice—there is the loathed crime which curses the memory of the world. The slave doomed by his lord’s caprice to perish under tortures—one feels it a dreadful and intolerable thing; but it is merely the crude presentment of what has been done and endured a million times in every stage of civilization. Oh, the last thoughts of those who have agonized unto death amid wrongs to which no man would give ear! ”

“ Shall a man with a heart feel this horrible injustice, and not rebel? Grant that I am rightly punished for my impatience, my pride, my jealousy, how have you been rewarded for your stainless youth, your innocent trust, your almost miraculous goodness? ”

“ If he murmur, there is the tormenting lash; if he resist, it is death.—And the injustice extends even beyond the grave; for the story of the slave is told by his oppressor, and the manly spirit which the poor creature shows, when stung to the very heart's core, is represented as diabolical revenge. ”

“ The wind bore through the air the echoes of so many acts of injustice!... The tale of injustice is unnumbered: in remedying one there is danger of causing others. What is injustice?—To one man it means a shameful peace, the fatherland dismembered. ”

“ Read the cruel laws their ferocity has dictated; learn the still more crying acts of injustice they commit, and how they pursue, as with a tearing lash, those whose weakness and stupidity have delivered them up as slaves; tremble at the recital of the tortures and barbarities they inflict before death, to which they condemn their victims without appeal as without investigation; behold the arts, spiritual affection, sublime poesy, perish there; ignorance, instability, misery, and terror succeed them, and reign without interruption and without restraint. ”

“ I see the injustice in this city, its pauperism, suffering, and crime, men smarting all their life, and by no fault of theirs. I know there must be another hemisphere to balance this; another life, wherein justice shall come to all and for all. ”

“ What I am concerned to know is, that that man's influence and authority were on the side of the slaveholder, and not of the slave,—of the guilty, and not of the innocent,—of injustice, and not of justice. ”

“ The innate sense of justice and injustice, of good and evil is beclouded in the popular mind. Some, besotted with terror, undergo unheard-of ills with abject and degrading resignation; others, a prey to headlong vertigo, mix actions of greatest nobility with deeds that are most reprehensible. Your vengeance fatedly begets incalculable misfortunes. No doubt there is now many a seigneur, who, merciless until recently, does now conduct himself with less cruelty towards his slaves, as a consequence of the terror with which you inspire him. ”

“ For what reason do you afflict your souls while you continue to find pleasure in oppression and to take delight in injustice? Behold, you fast for the sake of strife and contention and to smite with the fist of wickedness. ”

“ You exaggerate their weaknesses, and you make a crime to them of the slightest imperfections; and that is an inhumanity. You turn even their zeal and fervour into ridicule; and that is an impiety. And behold, my brethren, the three descriptions of the world's injustice toward the pious: — an injustice of temerity, which always suspects their intentions; an injustice of inhumanity, which gives no palliation to the slightest imperfections; an injustice of impiety, which, of their zeal and sanctity, makes a subject of contempt and derision. ”

“ If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. ”

“ Injustice we worship; all that lifts us out of the miseries of life is the sublime fruit of injustice. Every immortal deed was an act of fearful injustice; the world of grandeur, of triumph, of courage, of lofty aspiration, was built up on injustice. ”

“ Unjust and violent, you will be destroyed by your own injustice and violence. And the monstrous party of unrighteousness, hitherto inviolable, respected and feared, is falling, breaking asunder of its own weight. ”

“ This injustice, so glaring that a savage would blush to acknowledge it, exists almost unnoticed in a city overrun with benevolent societies, crowded with churches, and inundated with sympathies for the wronged of every nation or city on earth. ”

“ “Where there’s law there’s injustice,” put in the little man. ”

“ There is, in the meantime, no doubt that, however wild, ferocious, and savage they may have appeared, the strong and terrible hand of injustice and oppression had much, too much, to do with the crimes which they had committed, and which drove them out of the pale of civilized life. ”

“ But go zealously on, ye good governors, you will stand higher with the people if you kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to the dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. God permits us to suffer. ”

“ Perhaps we may be wrong; if so, you in your wisdom should convince us that we are mistaken in preferring justice to injustice.
And how am I to convince you, he said, if you are not already convinced by what I have just said; what more can I do for you? Would you have me put the proof bodily into your souls? ”

“ Unreason and injustice at the top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason and injustice from beginning to end—if it ever has an end—how should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? ”

“ Seeing then that there are these two evils, the doing injustice and the suffering injustice—and we affirm that to do injustice is a greater, and to suffer injustice a lesser evil—by what devices can a man succeed in obtaining the two advantages, the one of not doing and the other of not suffering injustice? ”

“ Injustice swift, erect, and unconfined, Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o’er mankind, While Prayers, to heal her wrongs, move slow behind. ”

“ Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate. ”

“ Whence it comes to pass, that in their results we have sometimes found the same spirit of cruelty and revenge, of malice and pride, the same blindness and obstinacy and unsteadiness, the same ungovernable rage and anger, the same injustice, sophistry, and fraud, that ever lodged in the breast of any individual. ”

“ When an evil thought suggests that there is injustice in the circumstance that the hare falls a prey to the lion or wolf, and the fly to the spider, Reason steps in warning him as follows: How can I charge the all-Wise with injustice when I am convinced of His justice, and that injustice is quite out of the question? ”

“ With this prudent reserve, they taught that injustice is a powerful and beautiful principle, reckoning it among the virtues, and attributing to it all the characteristics usually attributed to justice. ”

“ The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. ”

“ It was more tolerable to submit to occasional injustice and cruelty which was shared by all classes of society around them than to be daily reminded that they formed a class apart—the proper objects of general contempt and aversion. ”

“ Every nation that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last convulsion. ”

“ Every man’s observation may suggest to him many kinds of injustice and oppression which the rich, the insidious, or the powerful, can commit in spite of law, or perhaps by the aid of law, against the poor, the unsuspecting, and the friendless.—Many, who can silence conscience and evade law, tremble at the thoughts of their injustice being published ”

“ The eternal objection is:—“There will be anarchy”—yes, but now it is worse than anarchy: injustice.—“What, then, if to begin everything from the beginning; the strong will again offend the weak.” Yes, everything from the beginning again, but with this difference, that while now we continue the cruelty and injustice which have been established in heathen barbaric times, we now live in the light of Christianity and the cruelty and injustice will not be the same cruelty and injustice.... ”

“ By this law summary injustice is executed by an ignorant and furious multitude, who burn and destroy, plunder and murder, without measure and without mercy, the property and persons of anybody and everybody who happen to be obnoxious, or are pointed out as objects entitled to the particular attention of their mobocratic mightinesses. ”

“ But even though we may owe every character of body and mind to the fulfilment of some such inexorable law in the past, yet the witnessing of the operation brings ever a feeling of cruelty, of injustice somewhere. ”

“ Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant. ”

“ So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice: (he who is found out is nobody:) for the highest reach of injustice is, to be deemed just when you are not. ”

“ Thus those who commit injustice, yet have the wit or the good fortune to escape the consequences of their actions, climb into the seats of the stronger and share their immunity from moral restrictions. ”

“ For mankind censure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not because they shrink from committing it. ”

“ XXX. The very injustice of all offences ought to be a GENERAL motive with men, to restrain them from the commission of them. For at present we are not considering sins of any kind, but those, which extend their consequences beyond the offender himself, and affect others. And injustice is the more heinous and criminal in proportion to the greatness of the injury, which it inflicts. ”

“ From a long and miserable experience of suffering, injustice, disgrace and aggression the nations of the earth are mostly swayed by fear—fear of the sort that a little cheap oratory turns easily to rage, hate, and violence. ”

“ Now-bodily torture, utter indigence, hunger, infamy, and whatever else the brothers observed to befall the just man, far outweigh, doubtless, that spiritual pleasure which flows from justice; and so injustice would have to be preferred to justice, and ranked in the number of virtues. ”

“ But when any one manifests injustice or other qualities the opposite of political virtue, then all his neighbours visit him with indignation, censure, and perhaps punishment: implying clearly their belief that this virtue is an acquirement obtained by care and learning.35 Indeed the whole institution of punishment has no other meaning. ”

“ Injustice boils in men’s hearts as does steel in its caldron, ready to pour, white hot, in the fullness of time. ”

“ I know you to have this man's property, and your own heart even now convicts you of the injustice you practise. Nothing is hidden from God;—reflect on the punishment prepared for the unrepenting hypocrite. ”