Being On Trial Quotes & Sayings

Again Satan was defeated, and again he resorted to deception, in the hope of converting his defeat into a victory. To stir up rebellion in the fallen race, he now represented God as unjust in having permitted man to transgress his law. "Why," said the artful tempter, "when God knew what would be the result, did he permit man to be placed on trial, to sin, and bring in misery and death?" And the children of Adam, forgetful of the long-suffering mercy that had granted man another trial, regardless of the amazing, the awful sacrifice which his rebellion had cost the King of heaven, gave ear to the tempter, and murmured against the only Being who could save them from the destructive power of Satan. — Ellen G. White

the Jews should stay away from this trial -- for their own sake. For -- mark this well -- the charge "a war for the Jews" is still being made, and in the post-war years it will be made again and again. The too-large percentage of Jewish men and women here will be cited as proof of this charge. Sometimes it seems that the Jews will never learn about these things. They seem intent on bringing new difficulties down on their own heads. I do not like to write about this matter... but I am disturbed about it. They are pushing and crowding and competing with each other, and with everyone else. They will try the case I guess...

--Letters from Nuremberg, page 135 — Christopher J. Dodd

The gods demand entertainment. They demand trial and contest. We could not be allowed to defeat our own daemons, for that would be boring, and boredom is the only thing the eternals fear. We are being lined up, one by one, to tear at each other's throats. I do not think they wish to see a victor. I think they wish us to fight forever, locked in madness until the universe's end — Chris Wraight

Wiesenthal admitted to Bauer that he had invented a historical fantasy in order to give the Holocaust a more universal cast and to find a number which was almost as large as the Jewish death toll but not quite equal to it. When Elie Wiesel challenged Wiesenthal to provide some historical proof that five million non-Jews were murdered in the camps, Wiesenthal, rather than admit that he invented the five million number, accused Wiesel of 'Judeocentrism,' being concerned only about Jews.

-- The Eichmann Trial, page 9 — Deborah E. Lipstadt

That the nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to maintain faithful to that nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed doen in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed! ...
[T]he chemistry and physics on which we fed, besides being in themselves nourishments vital in themselves, were the antidotes to Fascism ... because they were clear and distinct and verifiable at every step, and not a tissue of lies and emptiness like the radio and newspapers. — Primo Levi

Mmm, being irresistibly likeable is such a trial,' she drawled in an impeccable aristocratic whine. 'One is constantly in demand, but one must do one's duty, mustn't one, dear chap? Noblesse oblige and all that ... — Susan Napier

I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness. — Huey Newton

Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault. — Terry Pratchett

If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter. — Therese Of Lisieux

I look at it this way - I don't ever want to apologize for something i've said, but I want to be gracious enough to be ready to apologize if I ever need to. My answers to those questions have come gradually and after some trial and error. In my own life, personally and professionally, I've realized that being civil is an active decision that I get to choose to make several times a day. That's why I believe there's hope - civility is not extinct. It is a choice. — Dana Perino

I'm very interested in soldier recovery projects and in Bradley Manning's story, the army intelligence officer who's being held as a detainee and is going to trial for crimes of treason. — Eion Bailey

All that is known for sure is that endometriosis is endemic and that it cannot be cured. Management is the best hope. This makes for treatments that are, if I am being polite, based on trial and error. If I am feeling less generous, they are shots in the dark. — Rose George

The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power ever has paid to Reason. — Robert H. Jackson

While big corporations make huge, tax-free profits, taxes for the everyday working person skyrocket. While politicians take free trips around the world, those same politicians cut back food stamps for the poor. While politicians increase their salaries, millions of people are being laid off. This city is on the brink of bankruptcy, and yet hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent on this trial. I do not understand a government so willing to spend millions of dollars on arms, to explore outer space, even the planet Jupiter, and at the same time close down day care centers and fire stations. — Assata Shakur

As long as American liberals are going to keep announcing that they're embarrassed for their country, how about being embarrassed by our public schools or by our ridiculous trial lawyer culture that other countries find laughable? — Ann Coulter

The ethic of ecstasy is the opposite of the trial's ethic; under its protection everybody does whatever he wants: now anyone can suck his thumb as he likes, from infancy to graduation, and it is a freedom no one will be willing to give up; look around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face-in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes, and each of them writes the way rock is danced to: alone, for himself, focused on himself yet making the same motions as all the others. In this situation of uniform egocentricity, the sense of guilt does not play the role it once did; the tribunals still operate, but they are fascinated exclusively by the past; they see only the core of the century; they see only the generations that are old or dead. — Milan Kundera

This is folly, Tyrion,' declared Lord Tywin. 'Speak to the matter at hand. You are not on trial for being a dwarf.
'That is where you err, my lord. I have been on trial for being a dwarf my entire life. — George R R Martin

She had not eaten supper and remembered the chicken and salad and wondered where Ervin was and imagined him in a nice restaurant, being pleasant with the waitress in a very low-key way, letting on nothing, a felon in flight, a murderer of possibilities, a their of happiness, a man guilty of so much, yet never standing trial for anything. — Lawrence Naumoff

The American public got to see for themselves every day, all day, how this trial progressed. There's a lot of value in the public being able to see how the system works. — Lance Ito

The repose necessary to all beauty is repose, not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won; and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort. — John Ruskin

Respect for humanity! Respect for humanity! If such respect is rooted in the human heart, humanity will eventually establish a social, political, or economic system that reflects it. A civilization is before all else rooted in its substance. At first this was a blind urge for warmth. Then by trial and error man found the way to the fire.
That is probably why, my friend, I have such need of your friendship. I need a companion who - beyond the struggles of reason - respects in me the pilgrim on his way to that fire. I sometimes need to feel the promised warmth ahead of time and to rest somewhere beyond myself in that meeting place that will be ours. [ ... ] Beyond the clumsiness of my words, beyond my defective reasoning, you are ready to see me as a human being. You are ready to honor in me the representative of beliefs, customs, loves. If I differ from you, far from wronging you, I enrich you. You question me as you would a traveler. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The Israeli court psychiatrist who examined Eichmann found him a "completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am after examining him," the implication being that the coexistence of normality and bottomless cruelty explodes our ordinary conceptions and present the true enigma of the trial. — Hannah Arendt

I believe life is an education meant to teach us the need to be better people. And I believe this learning often takes place through trial and error which may mean being an awful person at times before clearly seeing and grasping the necessity to improve. If you don't agree with me, just ask Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. I think Charles Dickens got it quite right. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I have lost patience with the idea of an insignificant human being standing up above the rest of us
whether he is called Reverend or Doctor or Judge
and shouting at us all about this thing or that. As soon as someone starts to pontificate in this way, I am apt to cut him off or leave the room, or, if this can't be done gracefully, I simply arrange that sweet vapid smile on my face that was so useful during the trial but that so infuriates Dr. Cole. After all, I have already taken the measure of my own insignificance, and I survived. — Charlotte Rogan

Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial? — Alex Berenson

I find it deeply upsetting when I see justice not being served. How do we as human beings deal with the unknown? The West Memphis Three trial is a joke on so many different levels. — Atom Egoyan

A close associate of his gave an interview in which the book was described as quotes 'fiction from being to end'. I suffered trial by tabloid for a couple of weeks, lots of insults in the press, in the columns - this man should be put in the tower and so on. — Anthony Holden

Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard. — Kenneth Tynan

Patience is necessary in this life because so much of life is fraught with adversity. No matter how hard we try, our lives will never be without strife and grief. Thus, we should not strive for a peace that is without temptation, or for a life that never feels adversity. Peace is not found by escaping temptations, but by being tried by them. We will have discovered peace when we have been tried and come through the trial of temptation. — Thomas A Kempis

Shame on you, Crispin. Married how long, and you haven't spanked your wife with a metal spatula yet?"
I'd gotten used to Ian's assumption that everyone was as perverted as he was, so I didn't miss a beat.
"We prefer blender beaters for our kitchen utensil kink," I said with a straight face.
Bones hid his smile behind his hand, but Ian looked intrigued.
"I haven't tried that ... oh, you're lying, aren't you?"
"Ya think?" I asked with a snort.
Ian gave a sigh of exaggerated patience and glanced at Bones.
"Being related to her through you is a real trial. — Jeaniene Frost

Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression. — Robert Nozick

Some find the overt anti-Semitism of Holocaust deniers the ranting of idiots who are best ignored. Others take these comments quite seriously and see a dire and existential threat to Jewish well-being. They see a Holocaust-denying president of a large country, one that is poised to have nuclear weapons, occupying the podium of a world forum that was founded in the wake of the Final Solution with a mandate to stop genocide. They hear him deny the Final Solution and threaten the existence of the Jewish state.

The Eichmann Trial, page XXVII — Deborah E. Lipstadt

Still, little by little, the two of us learned to devote our bodies and minds to this newly created being we called our home. We practiced thinking and feeling about things together. Things that happened to either of us individually we now strove to deal with together as something that belonged to both of us. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't. But we enjoyed the fresh, new process of trial and error. And even violent collisions we could forget about in each other's arms. — Haruki Murakami

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it
perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole. — Will Durant

We need to keep examining evilness. For instance, I'm totally against the fact that Osama bin Laden was shot. I think that he should have been put on trial and exposed as that human being he was. I think he should've been standing mentally naked in front of the rest of us and stand to justice for what he did. — Niels Arden Oplev

For me, Stalinism was even a greater philosophical problem than Nazism. Under Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. There is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors. — Slavoj Zizek

What I did, when I did it, was honest; now, through changed conditions, what I did may or may not be called honest. Politics demand, therefore, that I be brought to trial; but what is really being brought to trial is the system I represented. — Samuel Insull

Helena's telling Sorcha that the media are OH! MY! GOD! totally ignoring what's going on in Rwanda, we're talking four years on from the genocide, with thousands of unarmed civilians being extrajudicially executed by government soldiers - 'It's like, HELLO?' - while almost 150,000 people detained in connection with the 1994 genocide are being held without, like, trial. She goes, 'I'm not even going to _stort_ on the thousands of refugees forcibly returned to Burundi. It's like, do NOT even go there.' Sorcha's saying that President Pasteur Bizimungu SO should be indicted for war crimes if half of what she's read on the Internet is true. She's there, 'It's like, OH! MY! GOD!' but I'm not really listening, roysh, I'm giving the old mince pies to Amanda, this total lasher who's, like, second year Orts. — Paul Howard

But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance. — Philip Guston

If we are to find contentment in the midst of trial and uncertainty, we must accept our situation as being purposely allowed into our lives by a personal and loving God. — Linda Dillow

Running for office is similar to being a trial lawyer in a very long trial. It requires adrenaline and stamina; it requires being in shape mentally and emotionally. It's a marathon. — Kamala Harris

For within your flesh, deep within the center of your being, is the undaunted, waiting, longing, all-knowing. Is the ready, able, perfect. Within you, waiting its turn to emerge, piece by piece, with the dawn of every former test of trial and blackness, is the next unfolding, the great unfurling of wings, the re-forged backbone of a true Child of Light. — Jennifer DeLucy

[Alan] Dershowitz has also offered to defend Osama bin Laden in court, saying it would be an act of high patriotism. It's kind of too bad there isn't going to be a trial. Having Dershowitz defend him could be Osama's only shot at not being the least popular person in the courtroom. — Ann Coulter

This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial. — Moderata Fonte

An elderly merchant, a man with a long beard, was pleading with a young girl for a favourable report! Whatever Block's ulterior motive might be, nothing could justify his behaviour in the eyes of a fellow human being.
K. did not understand how the advocate could have imagined that this spectacle would win him over. If K. had not dismissed him already, this performance would have made him do so; it almost degraded the onlooker. So this was the effect of the advocate's method, to which K. had fortunately not been exposed for too long: the client finally forgot the whole world and could only drag himself along this illusory path to the end of his trial. He was no longer a client; he was the advocate's dog. — Franz Kafka

How can there be democracy if the leadership in the United States and Britain don't uphold the values which my father's generation fought the Nazis, millions of people gave their lives against the Soviet Union's regime, didn't they? Because of what? Democracy. And what democracy meant. No torture, no camps, no detention forever or without trial, without charges. In solitary confinement. Those techniques which are not just alleged, they have actually been written about by the FBI. I don't think it's being far left - I hope that I'm wrong to consider that it's far left to uphold the rule of law. — Vanessa Redgrave

Imagine someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him - do you go ahead and save him? Imagine there's an operation, and the patient is a drug user and the drugs are incompatible with the anesthetic, but the patient is ashamed of being an addict and does not want to tell the anesthesiologist - do you talk to the anesthesiologist? Imagine a trial and a defendant who will be convicted if he doesn't admit to being left handed - do you tell the judge what's going on? Imagine he's gay, and could not have committed the crime because he's gay, but is ashamed of being gay. It isn't a question of whether the defendant should be ashamed of being left-handed or gay
just imagine that he is — Bernhard Schlink

[On being deaf:] We can never get beyond the necessity of keeping in full view the worst and the best that can be made of our lot. The worst is, either to sink under the trial, or to be made callous by it. The best is, to be as wise as is possible under a great disability, and as happy as is possible under a great privation. — Harriet Martineau

For he had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out about them as one has to find out
through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood and his own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and confused. — Thomas Wolfe

I think that the path that I took was normal in the American society where young women and men are not trained as to how to make the transition from being a girl to being a woman, from being a boy to being a man. And so I think that most young people in America live by trial and error, and not by parental instruction, community guidance. — Sister Souljah

I said that sometimes it is an esteemed author who puts one on the track of a buried book. "What! He liked that book?" you say to yourself, and immediately the barriers fall away and the mind becomes not only open and receptive but positively aflame. Often it happens that it is not a friend of similar tastes who revives one's interest in a dead book but a chance acquaintance. Sometimes this individual gives the impression of being a nitwit, and one wonders why he should retain the memory of a book which this person casually recommended, or perhaps did not recommend at all but merely mentioned in the course of conversation as being an "odd" book. In a vacant mood, at loose ends, as we say, suddenly the recollection of this conversation occurs, and we are ready to give the book a trial. Then comes a hock, the shock of discovery. — Henry Miller

Without energy being invested in resisting the unwanted or dueling with fears, we have more energy and attention available for noticing not only the disturbing, but the wonderful ... When we are not fixated on threat and defending ourselves, when we're not exhausted and burned out from chronic stress, we are able to see the daily evidence that we are in the midst of a mind-blowing miracle called Life ... Then we will experience breathtaking, heart-rippling moments that counterbalance every trial and tribulation. When we're fully conscious of the universe's artistry and generosity, who needs psychodelics or Prozac? — Charlette Mikulka

Victoria had the discipline of being a queen to help her through the biggest trial of her life - when she lost Albert and faltered. I've had the discipline of the theatre to help me over the ups and downs. A wonderful life . Go it old girl. You've done it well. — Helen Hayes

Kafka was a master at the gruesome task of picturing people who do not use their potentialities and therefore lose their sense of being persons. The chief character in The Trial and in The Castle has no name - he is identified only by an initial, a mute symbol of one's lack of identity in one's own right. — Rollo May

It wasn't just Adnan being indicted at this grand jury proceeding, it wasn't just him being prosecuted. His faith, his ethnicity, his community--they were all on trial. — Rabia Chaudry

The soul of man createth its own destiny of power; and as the trial is intenser here, his being hath a nobler strength in heaven. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

I would say my faith has become strengthened every time I have faced what I considered to be a trial, and there is no greater trial than being 14 and pregnant and not even knowing what it is. — Oprah Winfrey

Who wouldn't admire the gall of a fellow brings a machine gun and a peck of hired killers to his own goddamn trial? Who wouldn't admire a fellow never leaves a trail of evidence? That's got this far in the world and galled so many folks and killed twice that number and cheated the rest, all without being blowed to itty bitty pieces or hanged by his goddamn neck or succumbing to one of countless infirmities he seems to collect like a goddamn hobby, hell yeah I admire the son-of-a-bitch. — Tom Franklin

I mean, the ones on trial are not like me in any way: they're a different kind of human being. They live in a different world, they think different thoughts, and their actions are nothing like mine. Between the world they live in and the world I live in there's this thick, high wall. At least, that's how I saw it at first ... I became a lot less sure of myself. In other words, I started seeing it like this: that there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine. Or if there was such a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mache. The second I leaned on it, I'd probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe it's that the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of us, and we just haven't noticed. — Haruki Murakami

I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial. — John Grisham

There is a constant suspicion that headache and giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant anxiety about the state of his body. — Plato

They say that at Thomas More's trial, Master Secretary here followed the jury to their deliberations, and when they were seated he closed the door behind him and he laid down the law. "Let me put you out of doubt," he said to the jurymen. "Your task is to find Sir Thomas guilty, and you will have no dinner till you have done it." Then out he went and shut the door again and stood outside it with a hatchet in his hand, in case they broke out in search of a boiled pudding; and being Londoners, they care about their bellies above all things, and as soon as they felt them rumbling they cried, "Guilty! He is as guilty as guilty can be! — Hilary Mantel

It took me years and years of trial efforts to work out that there is absolutely no knitting triumph I can achieve that my husband will think is worth being woken up for. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary. The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner stone of our liberty. — Horace Walpole

I'm thrilled to have a completely new audience that I can get from Court TV, without it being my own trial. That was the only other way I would have gotten it. — John Waters

I think being called a she-devil by a trial lawyer is meant as a compliment. — Ann Coulter

In that six months, so much happened that death seemed, primarily, inconvenient. The trial period was extended. I seem to keep extending it. There are many things to do. There are books to write and naps to take. There are movies to see and scrambled eggs to eat. Life is essentially trivial. You either decide you will take the trite business of life and give yourself the option of doing something really cool, or you decide you will opt for the Grand Epic of eating disorders and dedicate your life to being seriously trivial. — Marya Hornbacher

Wary of being caught unawares, we planned our parenthood, committed to trial marriages with pre-nuptials, and pre-arranged our parents' funerals - convinced we could pre-feel the feelings that we have heard attend new life, true love, and death. — Thomas Lynch

The story describes an incident during the trial of a black schoolteacher accused of disposing of a mule on which there was a mortgage. A defense witness, who was colored but looked white, took the stand and was being sworn in when the judge told the sheriff the man had been given the wrong Bible. — Isabel Wilkerson

I tried to reassure him with every line about how the world is hard and unfair sometimes, but that it's all OK because he is so loved. He is surrounded by souls who would do anything to help him. And not only that
he has wisdom and patience of his own, buried deep inside his being, which will only reveal themselves over time and will always carry him through any trial. He is a gift from God to all of us. — Elizabeth Gilbert

We need to think long and hard about sanity, a word most of us cling to with a steel grip. Does fear of being regarded by others as insane confine me in a cage of "responsible" behavior that limits my freedom and cripples my ability to love? And is it in fact such a wonderful thing to be regarded as sane? After all, the chief administrator of the Holocaust, Adolph Eichmann, was declared "quite sane" by the psychiatrists who examined him before his trial in Jerusalem. Surely the same psychiatrists would have found Saint Basil, Saint Theodore and Saint Xenia all insane - and Saint Francis, and that most revered of all mad men, the Son of Man, the Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. — Jim Forest

It is, indeed, a trial to maintain the virtue of humility when one can't help being right. — Judith Martin

In July, 1853, it pleased the Lord to try my faith in a way in which before it had not been tried. My beloved daughter and only child, and a believer since the commencement of the year 1846, was taken ill on June 20th. "This illness, at first a low fever, turned to typhus. On July 3rd there seemed no hope of her recovery. Now was the trial of faith. But faith triumphed. My beloved wife and I were enabled to give her up into the hands of the Lord. He sustained us both exceedingly. But I will only speak about myself. Though my only and beloved child was brought near the grave, yet was my soul in perfect peace, satisfied with the will of my Heavenly Father, being assured that He would only do that for her and her parents, which in the end would be the best. She continued very ill till about July 20th, when restoration began. "On — George Muller

For a long time, I missed being in the courtroom every day. I missed trial work. It was so much a part of my life. It was what I did and who I was. But over the years I did find the opportunity to realize my childhood dream of writing crime fiction. — Marcia Clark

By the rules of evidence in this trial the verdict is foreordained. If the testimony ... is admitted as competent, the conspiracy is proved. Because it would not be admitted except under the assumption that a conspiracy existed ... Here ... a defendant can be found guilty of being brought to court as a defendant. — E.L. Doctorow

I think it's a complete injustice, the way it's (the trial) being done — Dionne Warwick

It's just this long overdue. These people [ex-Nazi brought to trial] should be grateful to the apathy that exists there that prevented them from being brought to trial earlier. All of the people that they committed crimes against had their lives snuffed out, some of them at very young ages. Some of them never had a chance to get married and have children. — Marvin Hier

(My greatest human flaw and strength, not surprisingly, is that I can always imagine anything
a marriage, a conversation, a government
as being different from how it is, a trait that might make one a top-notch trial lawyer or novelist or realtor, but that also seems to produce a somewhat less than reliable and morally feasible human being.) — Richard Ford

If you are accused of being associated with terrorism, which could mean you are an Arab- American and you've sent e-mails to a relative in the Middle East, you should get your day in court, and I think you should get a lawyer and a trial, and I think most Americans agree to that. — Rand Paul

Lawyers are alright, I guess - but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't. — J.D. Salinger

Maybe being an adult wasn't crossing some arbitrary age line into wisdom. Maybe it was like anything else - training wheels and mistakes, trial and error, and now and again that feeling that you might have wings. — Megan Crane

But none of these men before you acted in minor parts. Each of them was entrusted with broad discretion and exercised great power. Their responsibility is correspondingly great and may not be shifted to that fictional being, "the State", which cannot be produced for trial, cannot testify, and cannot be sentenced. — Robert H. Jackson

I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court, — Rand Paul

Ian gave a sigh of exaggerated patience and glanced at Bones.
"Being related to her through you is a real trial."
This time, Bones didn't attempt to conceal his grin. "That's why you can pick your friends but not your family, cousin."
An emotion flashed across Ian's face before he covered it with his usual I'm-a-pain-in-the-ass-and-proud-of-it smirk. If it were anyone else, I'd swear it was childlike joy at hearing Bones call him "cousin". Recent events had revealed their long-lost human connection, making Ian both Bones's vampire sire and his only living blood relative.
That meant I was never getting rid of him. Then again, considering what my blood relatives had done, Ian was almost a saint by comparison. — Jeaniene Frost

If you're able to arrange a trial period with a new hire, do it. It will give both of you a chance to make sure the position is a good fit - and can help you avoid being in the awkward situation of wanting to fire someone three or four weeks in. — Kathryn Minshew

He thought he would light the fire when he got inside, and make himself some breakfast, just to pass away the time; but he did not seem able to handle anything from a scuttleful of coals to a teaspoon without dropping it or falling over it, and making such a noise that he was in mortal fear that it would wake Mrs. G. up, and that she would think it was burglars and open the window and call "Police!" and then these two detectives would rush in and handcuff him, and march him off to the police-court. He was in a morbidly nervous state by this time, and he pictured the trial, and his trying to explain the circumstances to the jury, and nobody believing him, and his being sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude, and his mother dying of a broken heart. So he gave up trying to get breakfast, and wrapped himself up in his overcoat and sat in the easy-chair till Mrs. G came down at half-past seven. — Jerome K. Jerome