Quotes About Judgment

Our religion, our party, our tribe, our town, our school, our race, our nation. Believe. Belong. Behave. Or Be damned.

Granny and me alone on Judgment Day and wonder if there is some wider meaning there, some cryptic message from a hidden dimension, from the Other, from the Over Self. Or if it was simply that heaven didn't want us and hell was afraid we'd take over.

Claude believed that only smart, attractive people had the right to fuck, and it sincerely hurt him when he discovered evidence to the contrary.

If he's like a lot of men, he'd rather be a murderer than a fool.

They glared at her as if she were a piece of modern art at a county fair. A hostile sneer here, a puzzled laugh there...

Does it go on the "keeper" pile or does it go on the "discard" pile? That's the first question your prospects are probably going to ask, because it's likely that the reviewers are staring at a pile of submissions much larger than they can reasonably handle.

To say that it is without pace, point, focus, interest, drama, wit or originality is to say simply that it does not happen to be my cup of tea.

You stupid woman, if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.

Everything depends on knowing how much," she said, and "Good is knowing when to stop.

I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That's what we're upset about.

You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right- that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn't be like that.

She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen.

And then, I was good to you, Sula, why don't that matter?...... How you know? Sula asked.... About who was good. How you know it was you?

All he did from freshman year through sophomore was react -- sneer, laugh, dismiss, find fault, demean -- a young man's version of critical thinking.

You think because he doesn't love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn't want you anymore that he is right-- that his judgment and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don't. It's a bad word, 'belong'. Especially when you put it with somebody you love.

The freezing in hell that comes before the everlasting fire where sinners bubble and singe forever.

What he might call cowardice other people called common sense.

Well, it probably won't live. They say the way her mama beat her she lucky to be alive herself. She be lucky if it don't live. Bound to be the ugliest thing walking. Can't help but be. Ought to be a law: two ugly people doubling up like that to make more ugly. Be better off in the ground. Well, I wouldn't worry none. It be a miracle if it live.

Good is knowing when to stop.

Race is the least reliable information you can have about someone. It's real information, but it tells you next to nothing.

We will be judged by how well we love.

He didn't want an outsider judging his family. That was his job.

Two pennies and an insult were well spent if it meant seeing the spectacle of whitefolks making a spectacle of themselves.