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

After reading Lovelace's lines, "Stone walls do not a prison make/ Nor iron bars a cage," Empson debated for a page whether walls did or did not, in fact, make a prison.

From Time Magazine Archive

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

From "Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbit

Stone walls do not a prison make, 24.

From Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul by Mudge, James

Stone walls do not a prison make,     Nor iron bars a cage,   Minds innocent and quiet take     That for a hermitage.

From The Pleasures of Life by Lubbock, John, Sir

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage" High halls do not a College make, nor book-lined shelves a sage.

From Memorial Day and Other Verse by Reed, Helen Leah