Quotes by American Authors - Page 1113

Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better.
Jim Rohn
You can put the human mind and body into strange states through the use of alien environments.
Steven Magee
I want to get lost in other worlds and let my imagination travel beyond this life I know.
Jen Naumann
...We must say to ourselves something like this: 'Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn't think "I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me." No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us - denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him - and in the greatest act of love in history, he STAYED. He said, "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing." He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely. That is why I am going to love my spouse.' Speak to your heart like that, and then fulfill the promises you made on your wedding day.
Timothy J. Keller
Dreams then were to be expressed in building railroads and factories, in boring gas wells, stringing telegraph poles. There was room for no other dream and since father could not do any of these things he was an outlaw in his community. The community tolerated him. His own sons tolerated him.
Sherwood Anderson
Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by "opinions" when you reach DECISIONS, you will not succeed in any undertaking.
Napoleon Hill
Finally I find it, the book, but as I’m pulling it out of the stack I hear a noise coming from my toy room. It sounds like scratching or scraping maybe and my mind instantly goes to the possibility that maybe it’s a monster or a dragon or something else with claws. My hand shakes a little as I stand up and turn back toward the room. When I step into it, I feel the wind hit my cheeks. I shine the light around and notice one of the windows is open. I don’t understand why. I didn’t open it and I don’t think it was open when I came down here. What if it was a monster? I sweep the flashlight around the room at all my toys as I start back toward the corner. Then the light lands on something tall… I hear voices. Ones that don’t sound like they belong to a monster, but just people. But that’s what they end up being. Terrible, horrible monsters.
Jessica Sorensen
I took his razor from the shower floor, bits of his black hair still caked between the blades. I took his toothbrush from the sink counter and sucked on the bristles, trying to find the taste of him, but there was only the flavor of watery mint toothpaste....I pulled the sheets off the bed with the idea that I could gather up the imprint of him and save it. I thought, I can unfurl the sheets on our old bed at home. I can lie in the creases formed by his body. I can sleep with him again.
Cristina Henriquez
Keegan shuddered as he remembered the dragon. The sight of the enormous creature had stabbed fear into his heart. The beast had been so large and powerful. Giant, roaring bonfires erupted from its nostrils and mouth. It had fangs that were as large as swords, talons that were sharp as knives, and a tail that could have destroyed a stone wall. It had been a gallant and beautiful creature. So beautiful and powerful that it had also filled Keegan with an awe that made him love the beast and regret its demise.
Kathryn Fogleman
Generous people are rarely mentally ill people.
Karl Menninger
Liberty should be understood as freedom from the government, specifically, freedom from the initiation of physical force by the government.
George Reisman
Never give up on your dreams! When you’re good at something, and there’s love in what you do, passion will always bring success.
Ron Baratono
... I have dreams of you too, Mariam jo. I miss you. I miss the sound of your voice, your laughter. I miss reading to you, and all those times we fished together. Do you remember all those times we fished together? You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame and regret. Regret… When it comes to you, Mariam jo, I have oceans of it. I regret that I did not see you the day you came to Herat. I regret that I did not open the door and take you in. I regret that I did not make you a daughter to me, that I let you live in that place for all those years. And for what? Fear of losing face? Of staining my so-called good name? How little those things matter to me now after all the loss, all the terrible things I have seen in this cursed war. But now, of course, it is too late. Perhaps that is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone. Now all I can do is say that you were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and that I never deserved you. Now all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariam jo. Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive me...
Khaled Hosseini
Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence of God and learns something of the secret of His perfections less by seeing than by fruitive love.
Thomas Merton
True prayer is a way of life, not just for use in cases of emergency. Make it a habit, and when the need arises you will be in practice.
Billy Graham
When the police willfully break the law on video and then deny the event in writing, you know that you are dealing with a blatantly corrupt group of people.
Steven Magee
My mother buys a handful of wishing beans, which just seem to be white, dry beans with no specific magickal import. She will parse these out over the months when she feels her family members most need a wish. She can believe in wishes, since it is the familiar magic of wells, birthdays, and first stars.
Thomm Quackenbush
Please kiss that girl a million times.
Maggie Stiefvater
It's beneficial to have a reputation for honesty, if only so that one could lie at crucial moments.
Brandon Sanderson
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
Betty Smith
All her life she had looked into dark; but this was a vaster darkness, this night on the ocean. There was no end to it. There was no roof. It went out beyond the stars.
Ursula K Le Guin
Sometimes, Nathaniel, friends can be like nice boots on a drowning man.
Gori Suture
They began collecting dishes and clearing the table while Swanny sat and watched them in confusion. “Now wait a minute. I was forbidden to help and was ordered to maintain my station, but you guys are all helping.”“I don’t much believe there’s such a thing as woman’s work,” Frank said. “I’ve always brought my boys up to help out whether it’s with the cooking or cleaning. Now, their mother will give orders and usually I’m not one to teach my children to disobey their mother, but there are times, and this is one of them, when you just don’t listen to her.”Amusement flared in Swanny’s eyes. “Ah, okay. I think I get it now. I should get my ass up and help no matter what she told me.”Frank nodded and handed him a stack of dishes. “Exactly.
Maya Banks
Mutli-tools are like insults, girls - you should always have one on hand.
Elizabeth Little
I don't know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.
Karen Hesse
Be kind like a flower and know that life is beautiful like springtime.
Debasish Mridha
Art is communication.
Madeleine L'Engle
To take this one shot at life and live it with God is to take this one shot and have it reverberate across and around my world as if it were a million shots and more.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown.
Alice Walker
Boredom is rage spread thin.
Paul Tillich
Do you want to know why men name their penis? So the most important decisions in their life aren't made by a stranger.
Linda Howard
We are training not isolated men but a living group of men, - nay, a group within a group. And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, - not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold. The worker must work for the lory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame. And all this is gained only by human strife and longing; by ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteousness and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth...and weaving thus a system, not a distortion, and bringing a birth, not an abortion.
W.E.B. Du Bois
My father’s corporation, the Nero Organization, supplied assassins for hire. Killing was our business, and business had been good for years.
Lisa Kessler
Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.
Fulton J. Sheen
To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.
Dean Koontz
In front of us, Annabelle and Aspen argue over whether black-and-white movies are amazing or archaic. Blue walks a few feet behind like he’s waiting for the pair to transition from verbal zingers to hair pulling. He wants a front-row seat for that show, and I don’t blame him.
Victoria Scott
She smiled. "Of course. You are right. How can I enjoy my happiness when so many suffer?" He kissed her forehead. "Soon all suffering will end." She gazed up at him. "And I will be by your side forever." "Forever and ever and ever." He leaned over and kissed her. And so the adventure begins...
MaryLu Tyndall
Sometimes when I'm writing, I wonder if the words have a mind of their own, and if they're really just using me as a puppet to manifest themselves.
Travis J. Dahnke
The question is whether suicide is the way out or the way in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Oh, the envelope did contain magic,” a strange, low voice said from the doorway.tJudith looked over. She forgot her cut and her coffee. And how to breathe.tThe tall, broad man filling up the door frame looked like a warrior angel with gold hair falling into his eyes, a pale-gold undertone to his skin, and ‘heartbreaking’ green eyes….t“Any magic that involves blood is a grave threat,” he continued. “And death by paper cut would be a long and tedious way to go. I can help.
Erin Kellison
It was strange how the future seemed tied inseparably to the past, so that both revolved through the present, like a great wheel...
Tad Williams
What I admire about the modern atheist is not at all his logic, but rather his gift of imagination. There will always be the cartoon versions of Christianity further perpetuated by the extremist atheists who do not possess the humility to ask real scholars and theologians its difficult questions. There is little doubt that the atheist has the bigger imagination: the first reason is due to his persistent caricatures of what constitutes a Christian; the second because of his belief that most of his questions are actually rhetorical. From this I can infer that, instead of laughing at one another (the Christian at modern atheist immaturity and the modern atheist at Christian stupidity), we would have a better chance at productivity laughing with one another as we all dumb down what we don't understand.
Criss Jami
But magic must hurry on, and the lovers remain...
F. Scott Fitzgerald
People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Rosa Parks
It was not, then, race and culture calling out of the South in 1876; it was property and privilege, shrieking to its own kind, and privilege and property heard and recognized the voice of its own.
W.E.B. Du Bois
I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.
Leonard Bernstein
I can't understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there's already so much pain in the world.
Stephen King
I’d venture to guess that a list of things you know nothing about could fill volumes.
Heidi Schulz
I wasn't put on this earth to be housekeeper to my own child or to anyone else for that matter.
Lynn Freed
You aren’t crazy,’ he says. ‘What?’ ‘I’ve known you all your life, and you’ve always tried to hide the parts of yourself that you think are wrong. But nothing is wrong with you.’ Those may be the best words he’s ever said to me.
Lauren DeStefano
Helpful is happy.Selfish is sad.(It's not uncommon to confuse the two.)
Richelle E. Goodrich
For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my 'race,' unless I was permitted to put 'human.' The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put 'white,' which is not even a color let alone a 'race,' and I sternly declined to put 'Caucasian,' which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you 'black.
Christopher Hitchens
When gangs took over the [abandoned public land in Philadelphia] and the neighborhood took a turn for the worse, horses became a way of saving lives. By getting boys interested in raising a horse rather than killing another human being, these cowboys gave the youth something positive: father figures, focus, and the ability to stand tall.
G. Neri
How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.
David Foster Wallace
Emotions unreel in her like spools of cotton.
Louise Erdrich
This was the move that was supposed to sweep me away. She seemed a little out of practice. I guess life with Charley Royce hadn’t exactly been the third reel of The English Patient. It had to be bad if Mickey Dolan was your back-up. Not to put Mickey down but he didn’t strike me as the lover-boy type. Especially when he took out his teeth. The last time Mickey thought about pleasing anybody but himself was just before he discovered how to sniff glue.
Dan Ahearn
God’s followers need to know the truth He sets forth in His Word so that we can confidently discern between His truth and Satan’s lies.
Billy Graham
Be good to the people on your way up the ladder cause you'll ,meet them on your way down.
Robert Junior
What was it St. Augustine said? "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.
Frank Herbert
You will never change, unless you are honest with yourself or you are forced to be authentic by someone that was honest with him or herself.
Shannon L. Alder