Men are punished by their sins, not for them.
Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
At the Cole School, where they had community singing every morning the teacher noticed that Jack London remained silent. She asked him why. He replied that she didn't know how to sing, that she would spoil his voice because she flatted. The teacher dispatched him to the principal to be punished. The principal sent him back with a note saying that he could be excused, but that he would have to write a composition each morning for fifteen minutes of singing. Jack ascribes his ability to write a thousand words every morning to the habit formed in this class.
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.
No good deed goes unpunished.
All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.