A man must fortify himself and understand that a wise man who yields to laziness or anger or passion or love of drink, or who commits any other action prompted by impulse and inopportune, will probably find his fault condoned; but if he stoops to greed, he will not be pardoned, but render himself odious as a combination of all vices at once.
Originally, in fact, the power to pardon was used precisely for economic and political ends. Legal historians have noted that in England, kings used pardons for their own ends. For instance, criminals could be pardoned if they agreed to labor for the American colonies or the Crown's navy.
To show men that crimes can be pardoned, and that punishment is not their inevitable consequence, encourages the illusion of impunity and induces the belief that, since there are pardons, those sentences which are not pardoned are violent acts of force rather than the products of justice.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
In the end, they pardoned me and packed me off to a home for the shell-shocked. Shortly before the end of the war, I was discharged a second time, once again with the observation that I was subject to recall at any time.
All men ought to think of Christ because of the office Christ fills between God and man. He is the eternal Son of God through whom alone the Father can be known, approached, and served. He is the appointed Mediator between God and man through whom alone we can be reconciled with God, pardoned, justified, and saved.
I don't want to leave prison having been pardoned, but rather with my head held high, with dignity.
Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.
In many ways when Jerry Ford pardoned Nixon, in a certain way, he did speak for the country.
President Ford was taken for a ride by his predecessor, whom he unpardonably pardoned; Jimmy Carter was also taken for a ride, but by his successor, Ronald Reagan, over the return of the Iran hostages.
