Quotes & Sayings About Verdict

The verdict is still out on my life, the judge having not yet instructed the jury, both of whom are me. — Robert Breault

The verdict of this court is that the accused are guilty of witchcraft. The maximum penalty the law allows is to be burned to death.However, in view of your previous good background I am disposed to be lenient. I therefore sentence you to be burned alive. — Richard Curtis

I think the term poet is a very exalted term and should be applied to a man at the end of his work. When he looks back over the body of his work and he's written poetry then let the verdict be that he's a poet. — Leonard Cohen

But then in March '92, the Rodney King verdict came down... And the city had lost its collective mind and was trying to burn itself to the ground.

Ju had caught one woman climbing out of the shattered glass of a pharmacy, not like she was the only one, just the one Ju had caught... The woman stood there holding her loot, face devoid of expression. In her hands she held two packages of Pampers, a can of roach spray, and a Pepsi.

'They be climbing over the baby when he asleep,' the woman said by way of explanation. 'The cockroaches, I mean.'

Ju took the Pampers and the roach killer. Then she cuffed the lady and out her in the van with the others.
Because that was the job. — Sunil Yapa

The trial was over in nine days, the verdict a foregone conclusion. — Matthew FitzSimmons

In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of posterity. — Marcel Duchamp

It's a dreadful assertion to make that once the war is over, the lesson learned, the conclusion drawn lies anywhere but in the verdict 'slaughter'. The dead are very quickly forgotten. But it's extraordinary - and a good thing too - how we're bested by them in this respect. — Jacques Yonnet

Judging from the tendency and effect of his arguments, an atheist does not appear positively to refuse that a God may be ... His verdict on the doctrine of God is only that it is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but an atheist. He is not an anti-theist. — Thomas Chalmers

Everyone wears blindfolds at a High Court trial," the manager replied, "except the judges, of course. Haven't you heard the expression justice is blind?"
"Yes," Klaus said, "but I always thought it meant that justice should be fair and unprejudiced."
"The verdict of the High Court was to take the expression literally," said the manager. "So everyone except the judges must cover their eyes before the trial can begin."
"Scalia," Sunny said. She meant something like, "It doesn't seem like the literal interpretation makes any sense," but her siblings did not think it was wise to translate. — Lemony Snicket

But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions and deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. — William James

Meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. Let the jury consider their verdict. — Lewis Carroll

The choice of moves should not be made on an exact verdict of the final position, but on whether or not your position has improved or worsened. — Jacob Aagaard

He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Their world has changed overnight ... Even after the trial, after the verdict
whatever it might be
life would never be the same again.
That was the truth of murder. — Marian Babson

No small part in the new awareness of the horrors of genocide was a willingness of Holocaust survivors to tell their stories. Chalk and Jonassohn note that these memoirs are historically unusual.146 Survivors of earlier genocides had treated them as humiliating defeats and felt that talking about them would only rub in history's harsh verdict. With the new humanitarian sensibilities, genocides became crimes against humanity, and survivors were witnesses for the prosecution. — Steven Pinker

Blinded as they are to their true character by self-love, every man is his own first and chiefest flatterer, prepared, therefore, to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within. — Plutarch

Some of the more industrious ones were washing the windshields of cars that had been trapped by the red light. I used to see them from inside cars and think they brought it on themselves, and they probably did but now it didn't make a difference. I went over to the fire and warmed my hands with the group. I looked at their faces: idiots, criminals, retards, schizophrenics, paranoids, rejects, fuck-ups, broken-down failures. Alone, once children, never asked to be put on this earth, they ended up as jurors. Their lives were the verdict: the system, the man, something had failed. — Arthur Nersesian

In your ordered verdict of guilty you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, mycivil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually but all of my sex are, by your honor's verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of government. — Susan B. Anthony

You and I can profit by asking ourselves: What do I see when I look through the lens of my attitude toward myself? Am I more a critic than a friend? Do I look beyond the surface blemishes to find the truly beautiful and unique person that I am? Or do I play the destructive "comparison game"? What verdict does the juror of my mind pass on me: "good at heart" or "guilty on all counts"? — John Powell

Sin is the transgression of the law, the death of Christ is the satisfaction of the law, justification is the verdict of the law, and sanctification is the believer's fulfillment of the law. — Ernest F. Kevan

Minister: As I was saying, Alex, you can be instrumental in changing the public verdict. Do you understand, Alex? Have I made myself clear?
Alex: As an unmuddied lake, Fred. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, Fred. — Anthony Burgess

My life
has appeared unclothed in court,
detail by detail,
death-bone witness by death-bone witness,
and I was shamed at the verdict ... — Anne Sexton

So I feel that the experimental verdict is in: the world is weird, and we just have to learn to live with it. — Max Tegmark

Villagers took her sudden death as a curse of verdict stone.... — Jalaj Mishra

Although I don't use it nearly so much anymore, I've decided, five years down the line, that Mr. Treadstone's verdict on 'kind of' was kind of unjust. Obviously, this phrase can be redundant or reductive, or just plain stupid in some sentences, but not in all sentences. I wouldn't, for example, use a sentence like 'Antarctica is kind of cold', or 'Hitler was kind of evil'. But sometimes, things aren't black and white. And sometimes 'kind of' expresses this better than any other phrase. For example, when I tell you that my mother was kind of peculiar, I can think of no better way of putting this. — Gavin Extence

Those who reinforce the disintegrating elements in our society will get no thanks from future generations. The family becomes the ultimate victim of homosexuality, a result which any society can tolerate only within certain limits.

If the American Psychiatric Association endorses one of the symptoms of social distress as a normal phenomenon it demonstrates to the public its ignorance of social dynamics, of the relation of personal maladaptation to social disharmony, and thereby acquires a responsibility for aggravating the already existing chaos.
[response to December 15, 1973 verdict] — Abram Kardiner

Looking down on the assembly, standing patiently in the drizzle awaiting a verdict, I suddenly had a vivid understanding of something. Like so many, I had heard, appalled, the reports that trickled out of postwar Germany; the stories of deportations and mass murder, of concentration camps and burnings. And like so many others had done, and would do, for years to come, I had asked myself, "How could the people have let it happen? They must have known, must have seen the trucks, the coming and going, the fences and smoke. How could they stand by and do nothing?" Well, now I knew. — Diana Gabaldon

So?" I asked Vee. "What's the verdict?"
"The verdict? My doctor is a lard-arse. Closely resembles an Oompa-Loompa. Don't give me your severe look. Last time he came in, he broke into the Funky Chicken. And he's forever eating chocolate. Mostly chocolate animals. You know the solid chocolate bunnies they're selling for Easter? That's what the Oompa-Loompa ate for dinner. Had a chocolate duck at lunch with a side of yellow Peeps. — Becca Fitzpatrick

So what's the verdict?" Kayla asked. "Can I act, or am I just a bimbo who got hired because I look good
in lingerie?"
"Is that a trick question?" Sean grinned. "Because I'm pretty sure you look good in lingerie. — Alison Packard

The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history. — Pentti Linkola

Your mind is your only judge of truth-and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. — John Galt

Tobacco has not yet been fully tried before the bar of science. But the tribunal has been prepared and the gathering of evidence has begun and when the final verdict is rendered, it will appear that tobacco is evil and only evil; that as a drug it is far more deadly than alcohol, killing in a dose a thousand times smaller, and that it does not possess a single one of the quasi merits of alcohol. — John Harvey Kellogg

I happened to notice that among the men who had willingly presented themselves for jury-service was one whom I knew to be the father of seven children. Under a law of Augustus's he was exempt for the rest of his life; yet he had not pleaded for exemption or mentioned the size of his family. I told the magistrate: "Strike this man's name off. He's a father of seven." He protested: "But, Caesar, he has made no attempt to excuse himself." "Exactly," I said, "he wants to be a juryman. Strike him off." I meant, of course,that the fellow was concealing his immunity from what every honest man considered a very thankless and disagreeable duty and that he therefore was almost certain to have crooked intentions. Crooked jurymen could pick up a lot of money by bribes, for it was a commonplace that one interested juryman could sway the opinions of a whole bunch of uninterested ones; and the majority verdict decided a case. — Robert Graves

Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This s the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions. — John Gray

This led to a lessening of confidence in the judicial system. Justice, it seemed, was available only to those who could pay enough to secure a 'right verdict — Alison Weir

It is customary, in England at least, for Coroners' courts to give the verdict 'Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed'. This insult automatically puts the victim in the wrong and reassures Society that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Have you ever noticed that Socialist governments have a particular horror of the individual's suicide? It is a direct criticism of their basic tenets. — Nanavira Thera

You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity. — Christopher Hitchens

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Choosing how you vote should not be a snap verdict based on a few minutes of television. — Simon Cowell

Earlier today, the jury at the Martha Stewart trial reached a verdict. Martha was found guilty on all charges. In a related story, there's a huge sale at K-Mart. — Conan O'Brien

In Los Angeles, the jury in the Reginald Denny Beating trial, after much thinking, concludes, that Person A is not necessarily trying to kill Person B just because Person A happens to very deliberately bash Person B's skull in with a brick. The verdict is applauded by scientists at the Tobacco Institute. — Dave Barry

It's not fair that the accused is not protected from adverse publicity whilst the accuser is guaranteed anonymity, whatever the verdict. — Jonathan King

The verdict of the Greek people renders the troika a thing of the past for our common European framework. — Alexis Tsipras

In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision ... Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. 'Tragic Death of "Promising" Young Man.' ... The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Flinn (22) had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' ... The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner? — Julian Barnes

Only in the gospel do you get the verdict before the performance. I love you. Now love me. I love you. Now you can love me. — Matt Papa

Each man must reach his own verdict, by weighing all the relevant evidence. — Leonard Peikoff

When hatred judges, the verdict is just guilty. — Toba Beta

Poetry is a verdict rather than an intention. — Leonard Cohen

A conviction is in the nature of a verdict and judgment, and therefore it must be precise and certain. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

There was just too much evidence, from too many witnesses, pointing too many fingers at Ryan and his colleague for either defense team to have been able to portray it as a coincidence or a witch hunt or anything short of widespread corruption. And that's why we see this verdict. — Andrew Cohen

Harsh verdict of the great philosopher Lucretius: all religions were fundamentally immoral, because the superstitions they peddled wrought more evil than good. — Arthur C. Clarke

Kellum reminded the jury that special prosecutor Robert Smith, "a gentleman I don't know," would have the final argument, and that this was a powerful advantage. He then closed with a dramatic message that the jury's verdict would have eternal consequences. I want you to think of the future. When your summons comes to cross the Great Divide, and, as you enter your father's house - a home not made by hands but eternal in the heavens, you can look back to where your father's feet have trod and see your good record written in the sands of time and, when you go down to your lonely silent tomb to a sleep that knows no dreams, I want you to hold in the palm of your hand a record of service to God and your fellow man. And the only way you can do that is to turn these boys loose.123 — Devery S. Anderson

I want there to be an open and positive debate about the path the country will now take. Whatever the verdict of that debate I will respect it. — Michael Gove

The verdict to be passed on the third planet around Sol was never in doubt. — Robert A. Heinlein

I have carefully examined the evidences of the Christian religion, and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity I would unhesitatingly give my verdict in its favor. I can prove its truth as clearly as any proposition ever submitted to the mind of man. — Alexander Hamilton

Earthly providence is a travesty of justice on any other theory than that it is a preliminary stage, which is to be followed by rectifications. Either there must be a future, or consummate injustice sits upon the throne of the universe. This is the verdict of humanity in all the ages. — Randolph Sinks Foster

Uncertain justice by a verdict is much better than certain injustice. — William Murray, 1st Earl Of Mansfield

Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the "vox populi" now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.
Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V. — Alan Moore

With 'Verdict' I was away for six months, touring, with a week in each town. I did not really enjoy that aspect of it. — Matthew Lewis

The awkward pause. Instead of being controlled by the threat of an awkward silence, own it. Use it as a tool. When a request comes to you (obviously this works only in person), just pause for a moment. Count to three before delivering your verdict. Or if you get a bit more bold, simply wait for the other person to fill the void. 2. — Greg McKeown

A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map. — Robert Henri

Ten thousand people wrote letters to the governor of Utah, protesting the verdict, but Joe Hill was executed by a firing squad. Before he died he wrote to Bill Haywood, another IWW leader, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize." Socialism, — Howard Zinn

The verdict of the world is conclusive. — Saint Augustine

Keep in mind that we should always thank those who hurt us, especially those who did so bad we are forced to transform. They risk the eternal verdict of going to hell just to make us better than who we are. — Tyra Banks

That all war is physically frightful is obvious; but if that were a moral verdict, there would be no difference between a torturer and a surgeon. There are certain intellectuals who are too bright to be content with merely praising peace but who are infuriated by anybody praising war. If no war is possible, all criminality has its chance — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The trouble is that the whole 'accept Christ' attitude is likely to be wrong. It shows Christ applying to us rather than us to him. It makes him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on him, instead of our kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting his verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The Naga laughed softly, 'There's a thin line that separates courage from stupidity.'
'And that line is only visible in retrospect, my friend. If I'm successful, people will call me brave. If I fail, I will be called foolish. Let ,me do what I think is right. I'll leave the verdict to the future. — Amish Tripathi

The cows in Stella Gibbons's immortal 'Cold Comfort Farm' are named Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless, and that more or less is the verdict on 'Ocean's Kingdom,' the wildly hyped and wildly uninteresting collaboration between Peter Martins and Paul McCartney. — Robert Gottlieb

When you have incidences like the Trayvon Martin verdict, the erosion of certain fundamental rights like voting, it just reminds us that we're always one Supreme Court justice vote away from losing the progress that has been made. — Terri Sewell

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart. — Tanith Lee

When I compare myself and my opponents in other countries in the light of history, I do not fear the verdict on our respective mentalities. — Adolf Hitler

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself? — Irving Stone

My first day as an intern in the books department at 'Cosmopolitan' also happened to be the day the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced. — John Searles

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action. — Learned Hand

Crimes of the century differ from the garden variety of murders. They involve wealth, celebrity and powerful attorneys, and live on for decades after the verdict has been rendered. — Armand Deutsch

But you know if God should stamp eternity or even judgment on our eyeballs, or if you'd like on the fleshy table of our hearts I am quite convinced we'd be a very, very different tribe of people, God's people, in the world today. We live too much in time, we're too earth bound. We see as other men see, we think as other men think. We invest our time as the world invests it. We're supposed to be a different breed of people. I believe that the church of Jesus Christ needs a new revelation of the majesty of God. We're all going to stand one day, can you imagine it- at the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for the deeds done in the body. This is what- this is the King of kings, and He's the Judge of judges, and it's the Tribunal of tribunals, and there's no court of appeal after it. The verdict is final. — Leonard Ravenhill

I'm dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched: a man with a cane was crossing the street, a dull groan suddenly surged through the asphalt, the man stood still as if waiting for someone to repeat the question and then the earth opened up beneath his feet: it swallowed the man, and with him a car and a dog, all the oxygen around and even the screams of passers-by. I'm dead, Makina said to herself, and hardly had she said it than her whole body began to contest that verdict and she flailed her feet frantically backward, each step mere inches from the sinkhole, until the precipice settled into a perfect circle and Makina was saved. Slippery bitch of a city, she said to herself. Always about to sink back into the the cellar. — Yuri Herrera

Old age is the verdict of life. — Amelia Barr

He looked closely. It was very disconcerting to have your gay unicorn best friend studying your penis that intensely. Finally, he gave his verdict. "It's a very nice penis." "Thank — T.J. Klune

Since the Greeks the predominant attitude of thinkers towards intellectual activity was to glorify it insofar as (like aesthetic activity) it finds its satisfaction in itself, apart from any attention to the advantages it may procure. Most thinkers would have agreed with ... Renan's verdict that the man who loves science for its fruits commits the worst of blasphemies against that divinity ... The modern clercs have violently torn up this charter. They proclaim the intellectual functions are only respectable to the extent that they are bound up with the pursuit of concrete advantage. — Julien Benda

The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death. The verdict at the inquest was "natural suicide." In — Gaston Leroux

It's actually quite common for presidents to believe that future generations will render a verdict on their presidencies that is more lasting or definitive than the judgments of their contemporaries. The reason is that although history is certainly "an argument without end" - we're still debating many age-old questions - time does help settle others. — David Greenberg

Lawyers are always confident before the verdict. It's only after that they share their doubts. — Julian Fellowes

At the end of your life you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent. — Barbara Bush

No one embodied the spirit of the frontier more than Daniel Boone, who faced and defeated countless natural and man-made dangers to literally hand cut the trail west through the wilderness. He marched with then colonel George Washington in the French and Indian War, established one of the most important trading posts in the West, served three terms in the Virginia Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. His exploits made him world famous; he served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and numerous other pioneer stories. He was so well known and respected that even Lord Byron, in his epic poem Don Juan, wrote, "Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere ... " And yet he was accused of treason - betraying his country - the most foul of all crimes at the time. What really happened to bring him to that courtroom? And was the verdict reached there correct? — Bill O'Reilly

A man willing to sacrifice his life for you is more than worth admiring. He's worth loving. — Jessica R. Patch

Place nothing above the verdict of your own mind. — Ayn Rand

If once again Germany destabilizes Europe, then Germany will be not be divided again, but wiped off the map. East and West have the necessary technology in order to enforce this verdict. If Germany begins again, there is no other solution. — Lech Walesa

What is the verdict?"

"There is always hope." His face softened. "However, it's unlikely your brain damage will improve."

He'd given me the answer I'd expected and dreaded.

I shut my eyes and sagged into the pillows. I'd braced myself for this result, but I'd wanted a miracle so badly that it was painful to hear the truth.

Sunlight pressed in on me, trying to cheer me up. I would resist a moment longer. This room, the quilt, my closed eyes - they formed a serene barrier against the world, although it wasn't clear to me if I wanted to keep the scary stuff out or the scared me in. — Elizabeth Langston

Since the Justice Department refuses to allow you to render a verdict, I'm going to present the case now, on the facts, against Hillary Rodham Clinton. — Chris Christie

I ask, if I shall never see you again and fix my eyes on that solidity, what form will our communication take? You have gone across the court, further and further, drawing finer and finer the thread between us. But you exist somewhere. Something of you remains. A judge. That is, if I discover a new vein in myself I shall submit it to you privately. I shall ask, What is your verdict? You shall remain the arbiter. But for how long? Things will become too difficult to explain: there will be new things; already my son. — Virginia Woolf

I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being-that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. Without — Mark Twain

Sentence first; verdict afterwards. -Queen of Hearts — Lewis Carroll

The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

At Bob Dylan's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, Bruce Springsteen described hearing Dylan's music for the very first time. Springsteen was fifteen, he said, riding in the car with his mother, idly listening to the radio, when "Like a Rolling Stone" came on. It was as though, Springsteen recalled, "somebody took his boot and kicked open the door to your mind." His mother's verdict: "That man can't sing." Mrs. Springsteen's response reminds us that we don't all react the same way to the same experience - and her son's reminds us that life holds moments when our perspective dramatically shifts, when our assumptions are deeply challenged, when we see new possibilities or sense for the first time that whatever has been holding us back from freedom or creativity or new ventures might actually be overcome. There — Sharon Salzberg

I have no liking for novels or stories - none in the world; and so, whenever I read one - which is not oftener than once in two years, and even in these same cases I seldom read beyond the middle of the book - my distaste for the vehicle always taints my judgment of the literature itself, as a matter of course; and also of course makes my verdict valuless. Are you saying "You have written stories yourself." Quite true: but the fact that an Indian likes to scalp people is no evidence that he likes to be scalped. — Mark Twain

Horrendous cold - at forty below, the Celsius and Fahrenheit thermometers agree wholeheartedly. Feels like forty below, they say, staring at each other and echoing their verdict back and forth in the icy silence. Forty below! Stones would freeze in this weather; souls would freeze. — Nancy Huston

It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Consider the different narrative styles within the story, and the glee with which the "moralistic narrator" celebrates Aschenbach's fall - maybe, then, this is a hostile verdict and the international fame is warranted after all (given that Mann modeled his protagonist so closely on himself, it would be quite odd if he had intended Aschenbach's literary inferiority to be a fixed part of the interpretation). — Philip Kitcher

Found dead. A verdict as useful as a fucking Bible in the Bluegate Brothel. — Sarah Pinborough