This system of encouragement proves serviceable as a preventive of punishment, the attainment of the tickets being a reward, the forfeiture of them the reverse; and, as such, boys seem often more affected by their loss than by coercion.

There is nothing more foreign to a civilised and democratic system than preventive detention.

I watch him go, and wonder if being good isn't its own punishment as much as it's supposed to be its own reward.

Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

I was induced to establish several orders of merit, from conviction that emulation, well directed, becomes a useful servant; and, that the latent genius of some youth is more easily brought into action this way, than by the more sordid gratification of self-interest.

We've all met those who seem to radiate happiness. They seem to smile more than others; they laugh more than others - just being around them makes us happier as well.