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The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish day-dream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also. [Citing the story of an old woman reported to have fired five shots into the body of Benito Mussolini, one for each of her dead songs:} I wonder how much satisfaction she got out of those five shots, which, doubtless, she had dreamed years earlier of firing. The condition of her being able to get near enough to Mussolini tos hoot at him was that he should be a corpse.
-- George Orwell
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