Guide them by edicts, keep them in line with punishments, and the common people will stay out of trouble but will have no sense of shame. Guide them by virtue, keep them in line with the rites, and they will, besides having a sense of shame, reform themselves.
So called pleasures, when they go beyond a certain limit, are but punishments.
What punishments of God are not gifts?
Admitting weakness seems to be such a severe psychic threat for Bush that when he makes a mistake it's safer just to reinforce it. The strategy creates a perverse system of rewards and punishments
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.
Are there any punishments in life but our joys turned against us?
Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.
Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who have fallen from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone.
You may do as you wish without fear of retribution. It may serve you, however, to be aware of consequences. Consequences are results. Natural outcomes. These are not at all the same as retributions, or punishments. Outcomes are simply that. They are what results from the natural application of natural laws. They are that which occurs, quite predictably, as a consequence of what has occurred.
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
In the midst of the affliction He counsels, strengthens confirms, nourishes, and favors us. . . . More over, when we have repented, He instantly remits the sins as well as the punishments. In the same manner parents ought to handle their children.
There is not eternal damnation, the only rewards and punishments are right here in this world.
Some things come with their own punishments.
The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.
So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality. . . If poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about self-styled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you - nobody else - who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. . . There's the artist's responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth.
Should one be shallow enough to view existence as a system of rewards and punishments, one soon learns that we pay as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats.
Unconditional parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities.
I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality.