Simon Bendle

“There’s no remaking reality... Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes. There’s no other way.”
― Philip Roth, Everyman

“Society takes upon itself the right to inflict
appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of
shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man’s punishment
is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the
very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed
of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a
creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted
an irreparable, an irremediable wrong.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.”
― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales

“I'm as religious as the next man - which is to say I'll keep in with the local parson for form's sake and read the lessons on feast-days because my tenants expect it, but I've never been fool enough to confuse religion with belief in God. That's where so many clergymen... go wrong”
― George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman in the Great Game