God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgement. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgement of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime. Have you at least heard of the spitting cell, which a nation recently thought up to prove itself the greatest on earth? A walled-up box in which the prisoner can stand without moving. The solid door that locks him in the cement shell stops at chin level. Hence only his face is visible, and every passing jailer spits copiously on it. The prisoner, wedged into his cell, cannot wipe his face, though he is allowed, it is true. to close his eyes. Well, that, mon cher, is a human invention. They didn't need God for that little masterpiece.

I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.

Mary Karr

If the entire course of evolution were compressed into a single year, the earliest bacteria would appear at the end of March, but we wouldn't see the first human ancestors until 6 a.m. on December 31st. The golden age of Greece, about 500 BC, would occur just thirty seconds before midnight.

Jerry A. Coyne

Well fitted for friendship is he whom men have not disgusted with mankind, and who, believing and knowing that there are a few noble men, a few great minds, a few delightful souls scattered through the crowd, never tires of searching for them, and loves them even before he has found them.

Andre Maurois

She was the Judy Garland of American poetry.

James Dickey

Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.

Alan H. Guth

What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.

Ralph Marston

If you would have your son to walk honourably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to walk firmly over them - not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone.

Anne Bronte

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

Mahatma Gandhi

Undermining experience, embellishing experience, rearranging and enlarging experience into a species of mythology.

Philip Roth

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst expect the best and take what comes.

Hannah Arendt

For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.

Jerry Garcia

I've got a new relationship and I'm trapped in this old life.

Moon Unit Zappa