Quotes by American Authors - Page 122

Kate lost a mother," I said, "but I lost a nothing."Kate doesn't feel that way," Jack assured me.But what about everybody else besides Kate? How can I ever explain to anyone what she was when she and I had no name? People need names for everything. I wasn't a relative or a friend, I was just an object of her kind
Hilary Thayer Hamann
I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.
Margaret Mitchell
Become the leader of your life. Lead yourself to where you want to be. Breathe life back into your ambitions, your desires, your goals, your relationships.
Steve Maraboli
I need to fight for the preservation of the Earth type planets and its coexistence with worlds after death.-Banyan
Carolina Cody Aldaz
There are no illegitimate children - only illegitimate parents.
Leon R. Yankwich
Is this not the very thing that drives an adventurous man to navigate uncharted oceans, to traverse continents and mountains, to pilot virgin estuaries and hidden coves—this promise of inscribing a name steadfast upon what he finds? There are few parcels of earth left to be claimed; yet even as the known world shrinks, the heavens grow ever more infinite. An explorer of the skies need never leave his home or fret over the swiftness of other expeditions; he might give whatever name he chooses to any new thing that wanders into his view.
John Pipkin
The deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe forms my idea of God.
Albert Einstein
The fight for joy is first and always a fight to see.
John Piper
I have always known there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. I am alone, but my father is lonely. And if I had to choose one, I would rather be alone.
Ted Michael
Finding a new ethics or esthetics, as Dr. Douglass asks, will not put us in a state of grace. Existence is not given meaning by importing it into a revelation from the outside. The meaning is —there, in more closely contacting the actual situation, the only situation that there is, whatever it is. As our situation is, closely contacting it would surely result in plenty of trouble and perhaps in terrible social conflicts, terrible opportunities and duties, during which we might learn something and at the end of which we might know something, even a new ethics; for it is in such conflicts that new ethics are discovered. But it is just these conflicts that we do not observe happening. Everybody talks nice. At most there is some unruliness and dumb protest, and some withdrawal.So urging the juveniles to go to church is not serious, for how will the church give them faith? What opportunity will it open?
Paul Goodman
Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there I go to work.
Robert Orben
The efficiency of the cleaning solution in liquefying wizards suggested the operation of an antithetical principal,which-" "Did you have to get him started?" Cimorene asked reproachfully.
Patricia C. Wrede
He’s always been attracted to broken things. He was the kind of boy who talked the bad girls through their problems, who defended them and didn’t take advantage. He was sensitive to his stuffed animals’ feelings, rotating their position on his bed so that a new plush animal would occupy pride of place at his pillowside every night. Soon I became first and foremost on that pillow; princess of the island of misfit toys.
Jalina Mhyana
What kind of ministry is that, just talking to people?" Criticism directed at Francis Schaeffer's plan to open an obscure spot in the Swiss Alps to those who came with questions.
Nancy Pearcey
Successful journals break the deadlock of introspective obsession
Alexandra Johnson
My whole life was about her, what if her whole life wasn’t all about me?
Jodi Picoult
In your love I dive to find the nectar of life.
Debasish Mridha
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.
Philip K Dick
Love is a powerful magic.
Seth Adam Smith
The wizard [of Oz] says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find [the Holy Spirit]. The first will get you to Kansas. The latter will get you to heaven.Take your pick.
Max Lucado
Those who did better were those who didn't wait idly for help to arrive. In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals.
Sheri Fink
Know Thyself, a wise old Greek once said. Know Thyself. Now what does this mean, boys and girls? It means, be what you are. Don't try to be Sally or Johnny or Fred next door; be yourself. God doesn't want a tree to be a waterfall, or a flower to be a stone. God gives to each one of us a special talent." Janice and Rabbit become unnaturally still; both are Christians. God's name makes them feel guilty. "God wants some of us to become scientists, some of us to become artists, some of us to become firemen and doctors and trapeze artists. And He gives to each of us the special talents to become these things, provided we work to develop them. We must work, boys and girls. So: Know Thyself. Learn to understand your talents, and then work to develop them. That's the way to be happy.
John Updike
What an incredible thing! How much less they had than other human beings. Mentally retarded, deaf, mute - and still eagerly sanding benches.
Daniel Keyes
Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail to treat them with respect--not realizing that they have signalled others that it is not necessary to treat them with respect.
Nathaniel Branden
A man is nothing more than the things he does to get what he wants.
Hal Ackerman
We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.
Vladimir Nabokov
He had once thought it was strange to have a friend you'd never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you'd never really had
Tad Williams
...you can ruin your credit in one seemingly responsible afternoon, but rebuilding it takes years.
Sophia Amoruso
You can't learn everything you need to know legally.
John Irving
No one ever does the last thing on their list.
Ariel Gore
Was this humanity? Was this nobility? Was this the Christian glory that presumed to hold itself above the heathen Turk? To suffer innocents be sacrificed on an altar of corruption, merely that a lofty family be spared discomfiture? Oh, this was tenfold more abominable than the crime itself, that high authority should wink at it!
Ray Russell
We cannot own each other, Bo. We can only offer what is ours to give.
Sarah Fine
Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like... [It] often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. Nevertheless, so long as those commitments retain an element of the arbitrary, the very nature of normal research ensures that the novelty shall not be suppressed for very long... [N]ormal science repeatedly goes astray. And when it does—when, that is, the profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice—then begin the extraordinary investigations that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments, a new basis for the practice of science. The extraordinary episodes in which that shift of professional commitments occurs are the ones known in this essay as scientific revolutions. They are the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science.
Thomas Kuhn
These were lobbyists—many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings.
Ron Suskind
Take it easy, but take it.
Woody Guthrie
Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is what makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.
Mike Norton
To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness - especially in the wilderness - you shall love him.
Frederick Buechner
Change Your Posture! Change Your LIFE!
D. Nicole Williams
HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There arefour kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, andpraiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slainwhether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is foradvantage of the lawyers.
Ambrose Bierce
Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people.
Steven M. Greer
Life is not about success; life is about joy, peace, and happiness.
Debasish Mridha
It's just a bad day, not a bad life.
Mary Engelbreit
You are new here, so I will explain. In this land, nobility comes not from one’s fathers or a title or from the land one owns, but from one’s actions.” His voice was hard-edged, and his words seemed harsh to her. “The MacKinnon brothers are the highest nobility to those who live on the frontier—true warriors, men who know how to fight and survive, men who put the lives of others before their own. Your family’s wealth, your title, your virtue—they mean nothing out here. They won’t fill your belly, and they won’t keep you alive. What matters most right now is your survival. (Joseph to Lady Sarah)
Pamela Clare
Taking advice is fine; by all means, be open-minded, but not to the point of allowing others to obliterate your uniqueness.
Bryant McGill
He recognizes voices within silence. (of Max Sebald)
Patti Smith
We know how to work hard. We know how to go for the goal. We know how to achieve, achieve, achieve but we don’t know how to enjoy the journey.
Suzette R. Hinton
Life can be awful. Life can be ugly.And still there are those who smile at the darkness, anticipating the beauty of an eventual sunrise.
Richelle E. Goodrich
You don’t have to be the Zig Ziglar of sales to get promoted; in fact, the key to being noticed by most people of authority is just to show up when needed.
Jason Taylor
Faith must withstand time. It can’t be a here today and gone tomorrow kind of trust.
Shelley Hitz
Books are boring," James said as he wrote."They line the walls like a thousand leather doorways to be opened into worlds unknown," I offered.
Laura Whitcomb
Dare to be different. Dare to accept yourself for who YOU are. Dare to live your life without limits. Dare to follow YOUR dreams. Dare to explore, experience, and make mistakes. Dare to live your life without being afraid. Live, learn, and grow. It’s your life! Make every decision that you make count for something. Always know your value as a person and don’t allow anybody to make you feel anything different. You may have to stand alone at times, but don’t be dismayed. There’s something special about you! Allow yourself to shine and dare to do the unknown.
Stephanie Lahart
From "Lady In Waiting" in the anthology The Morgue :Now I have yet to meet the corpse could hold up its end of a conversation, so at most I might whistle while fixin’ one up ‘stead of engagin’ myself in any small talk that’s goin’ to be so one-sided anyways. But Cindy Flowers’ corpse weren’t no ordinary body when it walked upright, and it sure weren’t ordinary just because it was lyin’ before me in a pine wood box. So for the first time I felt the need to get a few things said to one of our visitors, and I leaned down to get myself real close to her face. Her eyes was closed ‘cause Pa had already sewed her lids shut.
Kenneth C. Goldman
Give me a bottle of hard cider, a bowl of Peterson Irish Oak in my Neerup pipe, and please, above all, give my Henry David Thoreau’s Wild Apples. Do that and you will see a man contented.
Nicholas Trandahl
As was often the case, Magic just chuckled and kicked physics in the balls, leaving it groaning and wondering what just happened.
Jim C. Hines
Sitting meditation gives us a way to move closer to our thoughts and emotions and to get in touch with our bodies.
Pema Chödrön
Considering Adrian had once gotten bored while reading while reading a particularly long menu, I had a hard time imagining he'd read the Hugo book in any language.
Richelle Mead
That was a moment where something clarified about shame for me: it’s not just something negative but some kind of arrow, it’s pointing at something, some confusing blend of fear and desire. There was liberation in that, thinking of shame as something to follow, like a path—rather than simply something to be paralyzed by, or try to dissolve, or become second-level meta-shamed by (i.e. “I shouldn’t even be having this feeling of shame…”)
Leslie Jamison
I miss those days even though I wasn't alive.
Sherry Turkle
It is an oyster, with small shells clinging to its humped back. Sprawling and uneven, it has the irregularity of something growing. It looks rather like the house of a big family, pushing out one addition after another to hold its teeming life - here a sleeping porch for the children, and there a veranda for the play-pen; here a garage for the extra car and there a shed for the bicycles. It amuses me because it seems so much like my life at the moment, like most women's lives in the middle years of marriage. It is untidy, spread out in all directions, heavily encrusted with accumulations....
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Books have the power to change and transform your life like few other things you have.
John Patrick Hickey