Wise words

Antony Green looked round until everyone was quiet again. "Most of you seem to favour punishment," he said. "But you realise it won't be punishment, do you?"

Everyone was puzzled at this. The way we all looked made Antony Green grin. "As far as this lady herself is concerned," he explained, "she was in the right all along -- all her life. Nothing is going to make her see she was wrong. And the only point of punishment is to make someone see the error of their ways. If they don't see it, then what you are doing to them is vengeance, not punishment. Right? I daresay a lot of you want vengeance. But if you do take revenge, that makes you as bad as this Mrs Laker herself. I want to stop the wrong in Cranbury. So I am not going to take revenge..."

Black Maria, by Diana Wynne Jones

And who says you cannot learn, too, from children's books? Woven so subtly within the pages are values--such simple values!-- that even adults cannot understand, sometimes.