Stone walls do not a prison make

Cultural  

1. External constraints cannot imprison someone whose spirit and thoughts are free. This saying is taken from a poem, “To Althea: From Prison,” by the seventeenth-century English poet Richard Lovelace.

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Example Sentences

Into her head came lines from an old poem: Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage.

From Literature

Winnie counted carefully, while behind her counting, her mind sang, “Stone walls do not a prison make.”

From Literature

The artist Olive Wharry, held in the same place, quoted Richard Lovelace, writing: "Stone walls do not a prison make / Nor iron bars a cage."

From The Guardian

The time will come when these pages—in their original, at least—will be numbered among the proofs of the poet's statement that— "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage: Minds innocent and quiet take These for a hermitage."

From Project Gutenberg

And so they have not been jails to me, any more than they were to Lovelace: "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."

From Project Gutenberg