Quotes by American Authors - Page 1137

My dear, I'm seldom sure of anything. Life at best is a precarious business...
Madeleine L'Engle
I love to walk. Walking is a spiritual journey and a reflection of living. Each of us must determine which path to take and how far to walk; we must find our own way, what is right for one may not be for another. There is no single right way to deal with late stage cancer, to live life or approach death, or to walk an old mission trail.
Edie Littlefield Sundby
I wondered if, by the time we'd been together as long as Phèdre and Joscelin, I'd be able to predict her reactions. I wasn't sure I would.I wasn't sure I wanted to, either.
Jacqueline Carey
Meanwhile she's coldly interrogating me with her eyes. She's definitely in charge of this house and this moment. This must be Chloe.She escorts me to a table full of people and presents me. She introduces them briefly. This one's from Morocco, that one from Italy, he's Persian--I'm not exactly sure what that means--this one's from "the UK." They're all in their twenties, poised and dismissive. They don't know or care who I'm supposed to be at home or where I went to school. They're measuring something else I can't see and don't understand.They nod and turn back to each other. They seem to be waiting for a cue from Chloe to release them from having to feign interest. She introduces herself at substantially more length. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Swiss; she grew up in Hong Kong and "in Europe."I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan. But she didn't ask.
Kenneth Cain
Hold love like a butterfly, with gentle preservation. Hold life like the reigns of a wild stallion, with fierce assertion. Encompass that, and you find the nectar of the immortal spirit.
Kellie Elmore
Be the ocean of love so that everyone can come to you to enjoy the beauty of the beach.
Debasish Mridha
Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.
Chaim Potok
Everything I didn’t know I was looking for…it’s there whenever I’m with you. I don’t know what it is that you think I deserve, but I don’t want anything other than what’s right here, right now.
Courtney Giardina
When humanity's deafness to simple common sense is allowed to reign, the implications for the world can only be catastrophic.
Robert H. Lieberman
Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio saying, "Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella.
Sarah Vowell
Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.
Hannah Arendt
Men wanted to be strong. One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn't afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology.
Neal Stephenson
Guys always think tears are a sign of weakness. They’re a sign of FRUSTRATION. She’s only crying so she won’t cut your throat in your sleep. So make nice and be grateful.
Donna Barr
God can turn your biggest flaws into your biggest cause.
Mandy Hale
How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts.
Neal Shusterman
Materializations are often best produced in rooms where there are books. I cannot think of any time when materialization was in any way hampered by the presence of books.
Shirley Jackson
Ehimlite universities are strong at delivering their commercial mission. They are pretty strong in developing their cognitive mission. But when it comes to the sort of growth Deresiewicz is talking about, everyone is on their own. An admissions officer might bias her criteria slightly away from the Résumé God and toward the quirky kid. A student may privately wrestle with taking a summer camp job instead of an emotionally vacuous but résumé-padding internship. But these struggles are informal, isolated and semi-articulate.
David Brooks
She wore red lipstick the next time that I saw her, though her hair was more voluminous with dirt than before. Owing, like everything else about these girls, to the fertility of rats.
Kathy Acker
He's got to have the ability, and it seems to be fairly rare, to see things as they are and at the same time as they might have been. What we mean is the eye of an artist.
Jack Finney
The only sort of pride that may serve a man well on that rarest occasion is his hatred of being wrong. It keeps his mouth shut, his ears open, and his research extensive. And yet this is also the deadliest because when he is in fact proven wrong, he absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. It then keeps his mouth open, his ears shut, and his research inexistent.
Criss Jami
You are a gift, so open yourself everyday to see the beauty with love, wonder and feel the joy.
Debasish Mridha
There was a difference, I had decided, between knowing and believing. And I wanted both.
Laura Bickle
This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.
Brian Tracy
.. the smell of canals and cigarette smoke, all the people sitting outside the cafés drinking beer, saying their r's and g's in a way I'd never learn. I missed the future. Obviously I knew even before this recurrance that I'd never grow old with Augustus Waters. But thinking about Lidewij and her boyfriend, I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far up you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean is a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again. That is probably true even if you live to be ninety.
John Green
It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life.
John Holt
Authenticity is a practice we choose in each present moment. It is not a plan or a destination to get to. The choices we make in the now are most important because in a fast-changing world, flexing to what’s happening now, and creating from it is a critical leadership skill.
Henna Inam
Like God, art seemed to hover over us, perhaps benevolent, and often sublime, but constantly, maddeningly out of reach.
Matthew Gallaway
If Strength comes through Suffering, why then I should be the strongest of all women, yet I am the weakest. God help me. Help me.
Lee Smith
Do you ride?"She smiled, her fingers lightly sliding around his ear. "Not since I hit that barn"Zach’s hands paused on her flesh. "You hit a barn?" "I had to avoid the cow
Shelly Laurenston
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you alive and alert! Believe you are the baddest ass in town – and [that] you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have – and then remember it’s only rock’ n’ roll.
Bruce Springsteen
You get a medal for being tough.
Scott Stabile
Every experience is seen through your mind's eye, so when you change your mind you change your entire world.
Bryant McGill
Recently God asked me the same question in a new way, "And if I don't allow you to heal, if I never remove the pain, will you still trust Me?
Cindee Snider Re
His hands are behind his back.'Choose,' he says.'I've already made my choice,' I say, and I grab the sleeve of his leather jacket and pull him inside.
Jill Hathaway
Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he’s there, he’s not really there.
Paul Auster
Get off of my shoulders. The foundation has been laid, now its time for you to build on it and get to work.
Amelia Boynton Robinson
The cord pulled taut and she rebounded, flying back up before falling again. As her velocity slowed, she opened her eyes and found herself dangling at the end of the cord, about five feet above Jace. He was grinning. "Nice," he said. "As graceful as a falling snowflake.""Was I screaming?" She asked, genuinely curious. "You know, on the way down."He nodded. "Thankfully no one's home, or they would have assumed I was murdering you.""Ha. You can't even reach me." She kicked out a leg and spun lazily in midair. Jace's eyes glinted. "Want to bet?"Clary knew that expression. "No," she said quickly. "Whatever you're going to do-"But he'd already done it. When Jace moved fast, his individual movements were almost invisible. She saw his hand go to his belt, and then something flashed in the air. She heard the sound of parting fabric as the cord above her head was sheared through. Released, she fell freely, too surprised to scream- directly into Jace's arms. The force knocked him backward, and they sprawled together onto one of the padded floor mats, Clary on top of him. He grinned up at her."Now," he said, "that was much better. You didn't scream at all.""I didn't get the chance." She was breathless, and not just from the impact of the fall. Being sprawled on top of Jace, feeling his body against hers, made her hands shake and her heart beat faster.
Cassandra Clare
Let us be the flowers of love and let us spread the beauty of happiness.
Debasish Mridha
I don't tell you this story today in order to encourage all of you in the class of '04 to find careers in the music business, but rather to suggest what the next decade of your lives is likely to be about, and that is, trying to ensure that you don't wake up at 32 or 35 or 40 tenured to a life that happened to you when you weren't paying strict attention, either because the money was good, or it made your parents proud, or because you were unlucky enough to discover an aptitude for the very thing that bores you to tears, or for any of the other semi-valid reasons people marshal to justify allowing the true passion of their lives to leak away. If you're lucky, you may have more than one chance to get things right, but second and third chances, like second and third marriages, can be dicey propositions, and they don't come with guarantees.... The question then is this: How does a person keep from living the wrong life?
Richard Russo
What is most lacking in the modern world of duplications and facsimiles, of endless information and intentional misinformation, is the authenticity that makes life truly meaningful and spiritually rewarding.
Michael Meade
The history of the failure of war can almost be summed up in two words: too late.
Douglas MacArthur
And my dream for you..........., is that you'll catch a glimpse of what I love so much about fashion: It's boldness and creativity, the confidence that it takes to stand before a camera and let your image be captured, even though you aren't perfect, the peace to be truly okay with how others see you.
Lauren Scruggs
I have always believed there is great value in studying the flaws of mankind and men —even fictional characters. All of us are flawed. All of us are diminished by some form of prejudice and bias. If a fictional character is to be realistic, he must struggle with imperfections and weaknesses.
K. Lee Lerner
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem a way of standing off and looking at one's problems with perspective.
Rollo May
She glanced at her watch. He'd been massaging his legs for half an hour. "I think that's enough," she said firmly. "Don't you want to go back to bed?"tHe straightened up in the wheelchair and his teeth flashed in a grin. "Baby, I'm so tired of that bed, the only way you could get me back in it would be if you crawled in there with me.
Linda Howard
A leader becomes great by inspiring others to do great things.
Debasish Mridha
Should-haves solve nothing. It's the next thing to happen that needs thinking about.
Alexandra Ripley
When you got a condition, it's bad to forget your medicine.
Frank Miller
Easy, dushka," he mumured. "You're safe.
Apryl Baker
We were lovers,' he says dramatically. 'I was very convincing.' Livia giggles and reaches up to stroke his hair. Hank pretends not to notice Livia's hand as it crawls across his cheek, and it turns into a game. Her fingers pet his lips as he mumbles through them, 'What part do you want?
Rachel M. Wilson
Regin:“I finally understand what a dickie-do is. Your gut does stick out more than your dickie do.
Kresley Cole
Though you see nothing, he is acting.
Max Lucado
I hate the vamp jobs. They think they're so suave. It's not enough for them to slaughter and eat you like a zombie would. No, they want to be all sexy, too. And trust me: vampires? Not. Sexy.
Kiersten White
The question “What is man?” is probably the most profound that can be asked by man. It has always been central to any system of philosophy or theology…. The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we will be better off if we ignore them completely.
George Gaylord Simpson
Biblical community is first of all the sharing of a common life in Christ.
Jerry Bridges
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore.
Edgar Allan Poe
educational television had a dramatic effect on relational aggression. The more the kids watched, the crueler they’d be to their classmates. This correlation was 2.5 times higher than the correlation between violent media and physical aggression.
Po Bronson
You two are perfect together. And one day . . . one day your children will change everything.
G.A. Aiken
We all think that in the future, we are wonderful people. We will be patient, we will not procrastinate, we will exercise, we will eat well... The problem is we never get to live in that future. We always live in the present.
Dan Ariely