Quotes by American Authors - Page 1239

I’m strangely comforted when I hear from scientists that human beings are the most complex creatures we know of in the universe, still, by far. Black holes are in their way explicable; the simplest living being is not. I lean a bit more confidently into the experience that life is so endlessly perplexing. I love that word. Spiritual life is a way of dwelling with perplexity—taking it seriously, searching for its purpose as well as its perils, its beauty as well as its ravages.
Krista Tippett
There are often two sets of goals in life: those that we establish, and those that really matter.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I’m a long-flight pilot. Pushing a little bubble of air-filled metal across an ocean of nothing is what I was born to do.
James S.A. Corey
And spare me the jokes about scoring.""Dammit, woman, you read my mind," he said. "Is there no filthy wordplay you can't forsee?""It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts.""So, ninety-five percent of the time.
Cassandra Clare
We all must deal with our shadows the best we can. No one can conquer them for us.
Anna Lee Huber
Still there are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being.
Albert Einstein
The noise around me blurs, and all I can focus on is his lips and breath and presence.
Christina Farley
America is a nation of illusions; illusions in the media, schools and government — an iron curtain of propaganda.
Bryant McGill
In America, disagreement with the policies of the government does not necessitate a lack of patriotism!
Senator Mitchell
I am as silent as death. Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever. And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can't. I can't.
Beth Revis
I’ve finally figured out a way to stand strong on my own.
Scott Stabile
No price is too great to pay for inner peace. Peace is the harmonious control of life. It is vibrant with life-energy. It is a power that easily transcends all our worldly knowledge. Yet it is not separate from our earthly existence. If we open the right avenues within, this peace can be felt here and now.
Sri Chinmoy
Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all the things you want from a person -- sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty -- and you get to pick three of those things. The rest you have to look for elsewhere. It's only in the movies that you find someone who gives you all those things. But this isn't the movies. In the real world, you have to identify which three qualities you want to spend the rest of your life with, and then you look for those qualities in another person. That's real life. Don't you see it's a trap? If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.
Hanya Yanagihara
I've been sleeping with the night light unpluggedWith a note on the rocking chairIt says I'm dreaming of the life I once lovedSo wake me if you're out there
Owl City
There are reasons why it is often difficult to reach our dead. When we do, our lives and everything we believe to be true can be turned entirely upside down.
April Slaughter
In the lean approach, companies are taught that prices are set by the market and that one way to improve profit margin is to reduce costs. This thinking flies in the face of "cost plus" thinking, where we look first at our own costs and set prices based on our desired profit margin. The reality is that most companies whether manufacturers or hospitals, do not have market power to set prices as they wish.
Mark Graban
If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.
John Medina
When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.
Henry Hazlitt
The Last LeafI saw him once before,As he passed by the door,And againThe pavement stones resound,As he totters o'er the groundWith his cane.They say that in his prime,Ere the pruning-knife of TimeCut him down,Not a better man was foundBy the Crier on his roundThrough the town.But now he walks the streets,And looks at all he meetsSad and wan,And he shakes his feeble head,That it seems as if he said,"They are gone."The mossy marbles restOn the lips that he has prestIn their bloom,And the names he loved to hearHave been carved for many a yearOn the tomb.My grandmamma has saidPoor old lady, she is deadLong agoThat he had a Roman nose,And his cheek was like a roseIn the snow;But now his nose is thin,And it rests upon his chinLike a staff,And a crook is in his back,And a melancholy crackIn his laugh.I know it is a sinFor me to sit and grinAt him here;But the old three-cornered hat,And the breeches, and all that,Are so queer!And if I should live to beThe last leaf upon the treeIn the spring,Let them smile, as I do now,At the old forsaken boughWhere I cling.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
All must pay the debt of nature.
Annie Proulx
I came from a disadvantaged home. They were Republicans.
Paul Tsongas
Information wants to be free.
Stewart Brand
In years gone by, particularly in the East and the South, ladies would attend charm school to learn how to elegantly stand, sit, dance, and walk. Even today, there are "Cotillion" classes for young people to learn how to carry themselves with dignity and use proper social graces. I don't mind sounding old-fashioned because these culturally rich rituals lay a firm foundation for the appropriate behaviors and excellent manners necessary for a positive impression. Embracing a tried and true tradition can sometimes be beneficial. Let's avoid the awkward, embarrassing, and unsophisticated ways we see all too often.
Susan C.Young
But you are not your bank account, or your ambition. You're not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are Spirit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You're here to love, and be loved, freely. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill - and we're all terminally ill on this bus - what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them.
Anne Lamott
Believe in yourself and start achieving your dream. It waits for you on the other side of the publish button.
Dan Alatorre
Don’t lose yourself in anger, Mac. It’s gasoline. You can burn it as fuel, or you can use it to torch everything you care about and end up standing on a scorched battlefield, with everybody dead, even you - only your body doesn’t have the good grace to quit breathing.
Karen Marie Moning
Very high altitude extreme night shift work is a class 2A carcinogen that may result in lifelong disabling sleep disorders, high cholesterol, radiation sickness and heart, lung and brain damage.
Steven Magee
A liar lies to others. A fool lies to herself.
Sable Grace
This lot won't suffer you forever.I wouldn't see you dead by their knives; I see a fine man within you Wit.""Yes, He tasted quite delicious.
Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, I said the universe. Call it Fate or The Force or whatever you want. Everything is everything. It's all part of one big system. I like to think of it as the universe.
Angie Smibert
Embracing your true self radiates a natural beauty that cannot be diluted or ignored. Confident, powerful, untamable, badass you!
Steve Maraboli
Today we tell girls to grow up to be or do whatever they want. But the cultural pressure to become a mother remains very strong; rare is she who doesn’t at least occasionally succumb to the nagging fear that if she remains childless, she’ll live to regret it.
Kate Bolick
If the apostles reminded even Paul himself to remember the poor (Galatians 2:10), then surely the rest of us need such a reminder.
Russell D. Moore
Rich will be my life if I can keep my memories full and brimming, and record them on clear-eyed mornings while I set joyously to work setting pen to holy craft.
Roman Payne
I felt a taste of that other kind of contentment that doesn't come from acquiring information or getting praise or building a resume, the kind that is just there, like a hidden pearl.
Jaimal Yogis
I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.
Joan Didion
perhaps the answer is simply one:one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,a small jazz combo working in the background.She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautifuleyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans overto glance at his watch because she has been dancingforever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.
Billy Collins
The immediate result of your infinite patience is peace
Wayne Dyer
I was to blame for not having pressed my point. I had given in to Authority when I believed I was right. That is another example of How Not To Do Research. I note it here as a warning to the young. If you are sure of your facts, you should defend your position.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
 Then he told Perry that love was like the waves in the sea, gentle and good sometimes, rough and terrible at others, but that it was endless and stronger than the sky and the earth and everything in between.
Veronica Rossi
Over the years I have collected so many books that, in aggregate, they can fairly be called a library.I don't know what percentage of them I have read. Increasingly I wonder how many of them I ever will read. This has done nothing to dampen my pleasure in acquiring more books.
Marilynne Robinson
When your eyes are fixed on the horizon of eternity, it affects your vision for motherhood.
Gloria Furman
He walked right to her, his long strides eating the space between them and sucking the oxygen in front of her
Cristin Harber
Our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That’s why it’s good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.
Joseph Campbell
Let’s not beat around the bush. Life is one great big wonderful but terrifying adventure. It can be as brutal as it is beautiful. There are no do-overs. We get a single shot to make it home. And guess what? We all wander and find ourselves lost from time to time. Enter our Savior. The One whose love and power to heal and example to guide is so magnificent that our frail human minds can’t begin to comprehend.
Toni Sorenson
I know what I really want for Christmas.I want my childhood back.Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.
Robert Fulghum
Am I doomed? Flashing darkness is pretty much the same as flashing light really. Fear isn’t at all the same as courage but after a certain point perhaps being afraid of everything is the same as being afraid of nothing.
Russell Hoban
People who use their religion as a framework to kill people, simply , are not nice people. Yes, that's quite a stand I'm making, but the idea that people are systematically executed because they don't share your God is beyond barbaric. The fact that there are people in our own country who seem to tolerate that, while being intolerant of a Christian's biblical stance regarding gay marriage, makes me want to go to leave the United States and go to a more sensible place, like Texas. in their conversation when they aren't talking about the Arctic winds, people who bring their own bedroom pillows onto flights, pharmacists who yell out your prescription in front of other customers, Time Warner Cable, Sting's chest hair) but I'll get into that later.... I may not do that...though, because I refuse to tolerate lists. They're lazy. And listy.
Greg Gutfeld
Take a giant drink of natures endless stream let it spout from your mouth in words so serene.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale."George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot . . .PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . .So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occup
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Your calling is to be faithful to God where you are, and in doing this all work is sacred, spiritual, and worthy of your full attention and energy. When you get to work, you are not entering a secular environment as much as you are bringing the sacred into the world by following Christ wherever you are.
Joe Thorn
I am like a ruined piece of parchment scrawled over and over again with your name, so many times it has become illegible.
Elizabeth Wein
Managers who inspire extraordinary loyalty from their people tend to be highly charismatic, humorous, good-looking, and tall. So, by all means, strive to be those things. If you don't feel able to improve any of those factors very much, you might consider holding on to your people by designing a little slack into their lives.
Tom DeMarco
To commit the act of felo-de-se is a form of delusion. You see, my love, to leave one's life unfinished implies the possibility of success. What is left unlived may contain the potential truth one always seeks. Those who kill themselves do so with the conviction that they would have reached that truth eventually had they lived to the proper end. They die in the illusion of hope which in a way keeps the rest of us alive. Reason, therefore, for not committing suicide.
Raymond Federman
I am empowered by self-knowledge, by ownership of my experiences, and by all aspects of myself.
Maureen Brady
The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely, and pursue that which motivates us not because man or some government says so, but because these are God-given natural rights.
Mark R. Levin
I love the phrase "I have a sweet tooth." I always want to say, "You're ordering it for your tooth? That's interesting, because it's going straight to your butt. I think your butt owed your tooth an explanation.
Jim Gaffigan
We expect more from technology and less from each other.
Sherry Turkle
Surely, our greatest parental hope is that our children attain a state of righteousness. It is the only sure road to happiness. But to attain such a state requires that they be decent as well as compliant. I know many, many young people who are not "righteous" in the usual sense. But they are wonderfully decent people with many praiseworthy qualities. They are not "devout" in the sense that they attend church faithfully, dress or groom themselves traditionally, or publicly declare their devotions, but they are kind, honest, hard working, concerned for others, and unselfish.
Glenn I. Latham
A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.
John Steinbeck