On Crimes and Punishments

“If anyone were to object that lifelong slavery is equally painful, and therefore equally cruel, as death, I would answer that, if I aggregate all the unhappy moments of slavery, it is indeed even more painful; however, those moments are spread over the course of an entire life, whereas death strikes with its full force in a single instant. The advantage of the punishment of slavery lies precisely in the fact that it terrifies the observer more than the person who endures it, because the former contemplates the whole aggregate of unhappy moments, while the latter is distracted from present misery by future misery. All evil is multiplied in the imagination, and the sufferer finds means and consolations unknown to, and inconceivable by, spectators who, in place of the hardened mind of the unfortunate person, imagine their own sensibility.”Author: Cesare Beccaria