Retribution

Retribution is punishment inflicted in the spirit of moral outrage or personal vengeance. Retribution differs from revenge in that retribution is inherently limited to equaling the seriousness of the wrong for which it is sought, and is not necessarily personal to the seeker.

Quotes

• God's mills grind slow,
  But they grind woe.
  • William R. Alger, "Delayed Retribution", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 123.

• Retribution—ah, my friend, retribution is the sweetest of all sweet dark dreams.
  • Stephen R. Donaldson, The Power That Preserves (1977), Chapter

• Retribution often means that we eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others.
  • Eric Hoffer, "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'", The New York Times Magazine (April 25, 1971), p. 57.

• To be left alone
  And face to face with my own crime, had been
  Just retribution.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Masque of Pandora (1875), Part VIII. In the Garden.

• Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts;
  Dash him to pieces!
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act IV, scene 3, line 81.

• I must confess that my estimate of Lovecraft would not have pleased his most ardent admirers. The view I expressed in that book was that, while Lovecraft was distinctly a creative genius in his own way, his pessimism should not be taken too seriously; that it was the pessimism of a sick recluse, and had about it an element of rassentiment, a kind of desire to take revenge on the world that rejected him. In short, Lovecraft was a 19th century romantic, born in the wrong time. Most men of genius dislike their own age, but the really great ones impose their own vision on the age. The weak ones turn away into a world of gloomy fantasy.
  • Colin Wilson in The Mind Parasites, p. 2 (1967)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 671.

• The divine power moves with difficulty, but at the same time surely.
  • Euripides, Bacchæ, 382.

• The ways of the gods are long, but in the end they are not without strength.
  • Euripides, Ion, I. 1615.

• Ut sit magna tamen certe lenta ira deorum est.
  • But grant the wrath of Heaven be great, 'tis slow.
  • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), XIII. 100. Gifford's translation.

• Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
  Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.
  • Friedrich von Logau, Retribution. From the Sinngedichte. See Longfellow's translation. Poetic Aphorisms. First line from the Greek Oracula Sibyllina, VIII. 14. Same idea in Plutarch, Sera Humanis Vindicta, Chapter VIII, quoting Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Grammaticos, I. 13. Sect. 287. Found also in Proverbia e cad. Coisl. in Gaisford, Parœm. Græc. Oxon. 1836, p. 164. Horace, Carmina, III. 2. 31. Tibullus, Elegies, I. 9.

• Lento quidem gradu ad vindictam divina procedit ira, sed tarditatem supplicii gravitate compensat.
  • The divine wrath is slow indeed in vengeance, but it makes up for its tardiness by the severity of the punishment.
  • Valerius Maximus, I. 1. 3.

• But as some muskets so contrive it
  As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
  And though well aimed at duck or plover
  Bear wide, and kick their owners over.
  • John Trumbull, McFingal, Canto I, line 95.