Quotes by American Authors - Page 125

Wherever you are, be there. If you can be fully present now, you’ll know what it means to live.
Steve Goodier
The practices we now call conservation are, to a large extent, local alleviations of biotic pain. They are necessary, but they must not be confused with cures. The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.
Aldo Leopold
It is my business as a Sunday school teacher to instill a divine discontent for the ordinary. Only the best possible is good enough for God. Can you say, 'God, I have done all that I can?
Henrietta C. Mears
But you hate poetry!Yes, but you make me want to write it.
Cassandra Clare
Sexual distortions carry strong undertones of prejudice—sexism, racism and homophobia—that rob individuals of their individuality. Common stereotypes include “men are all dogs,” “women are less interested in sex,” “gays are promiscuous,” certain races are frigid or hung, and certain sex acts are indulgent, effeminate, or immoral. Other distortions clearly function as tools of organizations or of religious or political figures to shape public opinion through dogma and to control their followers’ lives.
Alexandra Katehakis
When God made up this world of ours He made it long and wide And meant that it should shelter all And none should be denied.
Carrie Jacobs Bond
Sadly, in too many cases surrender is having been ‘outrun’ by fear rather than having ‘run out’ of heart.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Ask me about my childhood, and I will tell you to walk to the edge of the woods with a choir of crickets chirping from every direction, a hot, humid breeze brushing through your hair, your feet, bare and callused. Stand there, unmoving, and watch the dance of ten thousand fireflies blinking on and off in the darkness. Inhale the scent of cured tobacco, freshly plowed southern soil, burning leaves, and honeysuckle. Swallow the taste of blackberries, picked straight from the bushes, and lick your teeth, the after-taste still sweet in your mouth. Now, stretch out on the ground and relax all your muscles. Watch nature's festival of flickering lights.
Brenda Sutton Rose
Vogue began to focus on the body as much as on the clothes, in part because there was little they could dictate with the anarchic styles...In a stunning move, an entire replacement culture was developed by naming a 'problem' where it had scarcely existed before, centering it on the women's natural state, and elevating it to the existential female dilemma...The number of diet-related articles rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972...The lucrative 'transfer of guilt' was resurrected just in time.
Naomi Wolf
As it often did when I thought about chicken wings and entropy, my mind turned to Emerson. "Life is a journey, not a destination." Now that was one stone-cold motherfucker who was not afraid to deliver the truth: After the torments of the journey, you have been well-prepared for the agonies of the destination.
Colson Whitehead
The one who cares the most wins. ... That's how I knew I'd end up with everyone else waving the white flags and not me. That's how I knew I'd be the last person standing when it was all over. ... I cared the most.
Roseanne Barr
There are skeletons in everyone's closet, things no one ever wants the world to discover.
Jodi Picoult
When you surround yourself with wonderful, productive people, you become enhanced. Your level of happiness increases, which is your success.
Ron Baratono
Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference.
Wally Lamb
So why does the world appear stable to you when you’re looking at it? Why doesn’t it appear as jerky and nauseating as the poorly filmed video? Here’s why: your internal model operates under the assumption that the world outside is stable. Your eyes are not like video cameras – they simply venture out to find more details to feed into the internal model. They’re not like camera lenses that you’re seeing through; they’re gathering bits of data to feed the world inside your skull." The Brain: The Story of You - David Eagleman
David Eagleman
One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.
Jacqueline Kelly
SELF PORTRAIT: Throwing Armfuls of Air into the Air
Jandy Nelson
My mother died of colon cancer one week after my eleventh birthday, and that fact has shaped my life. All that I have become and much that I have not become, I trace directly or indirectly to her death. ... In my professional and personal life, I have lived with the awareness of death's imminence for more than half a century, and labored in its constant presence for all but the first decade of that time.
Sherwin B. Nuland
Justice, of course, was an elusive thing, very subjective in some ways, too often more of a concept than a reality, but without the pursuit of that ideal, where would humanity be?
Linda Lael Miller
Big Government' is a lot less like a 'Big Brother', and a lot more like a mother-in-law.
A.E. Samaan
But a generation that does not aspire to seriousness, to meaning, is unworthy to walk in the shadow of those who have gone before, I mean those who have struggled and surmounted, I mean those who have aspired, I mean Rembrandt, I mean Turner, I mean Michelangelo and Matisse … I mean obviously Rothko.
John Logan
Ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? That‘s why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if— as the war ends, or at least starts to end— if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isn‘t why were told that we were going there— Aren‘t we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, aren‘t we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, aren‘t we sort of letting them get away with it?
Rachel Maddow
If this were a novel, I'd stop reading right now. I'd throw it across the room.
Gabrielle Zevin
Poetry doesn’t pay. But I need it. And so do you.
Cory Basil
The party was at its peak and everyone was taking full advantage of the moment. Each lady had her eye on a certain marked beau. Elegant women conversed with eligible men, handsome and well bred. Ruby felt sorry for the under-endowed ladies and plain girls, who stood together in a small group with their mothers. Passing by the conniving little circle, she heard too clearly the strategies they had concocted. They were like vultures hunting for rotten meat. Mothers sent out their girls to meet the wealthiest and nearly deceased men of the ton.
Jettie Necole
A person at peace can immediately recognize a consciousness in crisis, whereas those in crisis cannot fully understand themselves or others.
Bryant McGill
I run through the woods, at once applauding myself for my wit-""Well deserved, sir. Well deserved.""And at the self instant, I am grinding my teeth because I am a vain, revenging idiot and shall be run down because of it.
M.T Anderson
I'd rather be befriended as an aimless lost soul than be befriended for adornment, gain or goal.
Donna Lynn Hope
The rich are all alike, to revise Tolstoy’s famous words, but the poor are poor in their own particular ways. Any reasonably intelligent reader could blow that generalization apart in the time it takes to write it. But as with most generalizations, a truth lies behind it. Ultimately, what binds the rich together is that they have more money, lots more. For one reason or another, the poor don’t have enough of it. But poverty doesn’t bind the poor together as much as wealth and the need to protect it bind the rich. If it did, we would hear the rattle of tumbrels in the streets. One hears mutterings, but the chains have not yet been shed.
William McPherson
To be in the presence of a great leader is to know a blighted soul who has managed to make the darkness work for him. Ishmael says it best: "For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but a disease." In chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck," Melville show us how susceptible we ordinary people are to the seductive power of a great and demented man.
Nathaniel Philbrick
People twenty-five and up just sat around waiting to die. That was what I'd thought.So while I was waiting to die, I looked at bras. The last thing on my mind was comfort. It seemed to be the last thing on Victoria's Secret's mind, too.
Susan Richards
Sometimes, soulmates may meet, stay together until a task or life lesson is completed, and then move on. This is not a tragedy, only a matter of learning.
Brian L. Weiss
Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute or two each day at dawn a voice began to whisper to me to be a better man, I decided the shock of recent events had finally woken mine. My conscience had a name— Baraqel. I didn’t like him much.
Mark Lawrence
The children who need love the most will always ask for it in the most unloving ways
Russel Barkley
I wish you would thrash him. He deserves it."She looked back at him. "I will one day, sir. I'm getting tired of falling down.
Tamora Pierce
Percy looked at Coach Hedge and Frank. “A trap?”“Probably,” Frank said. “She’s not mortal,” Hedge said, sniffing the air. “Probably some kind of goat-eating, demigod-destroying fiend from Tartarus.”“No doubt,” Percy agreed. “Awesome.” Hedge grinned. “Let’s go.
Rick Riordan
A wiser rule would be to make up your mind soberly what you want peace or war and then to get ready for what you want for what we prepare for is what we shall get.
William Graham Sumner
If you want to win, be bold but patient.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
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We see the puppets dancing on their miniature stage, moving up and down as the strings pull them around, following the prescribed course of their various little parts. We learn to understand the logic of this theater and we find ourselves in its motions. We locate ourselves in society and thus recognize our own position as we hang from its subtle strings. For a moment we see ourselves as puppets indeed. But then we grasp a decisive difference between the puppet theater and our own drama. Unlike the puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step toward freedom. And in this same act we find the conclusive justification of sociology as a humanistic discipline
Peter Berger
In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you don't think about them, you'll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent.
Neal Stephenson
Usually, if you think something's wrong, it probably is...
Jayce O'Neal
One lie can tarnish a thousand truths.
Al David
The origin behind myths and religion is human terror of annihilation. Human societies invented mythology and religion in order to militate against people’s fear of living a mortal life. People fear time as a destroyer of human happiness, human beings, and human societies.
Kilroy J. Oldster
There are two types of memory frequently experienced by individuals who have had overwhelming trauma that has been suppressed psychologically or chemically. The first is general memory, experienced as an adult, in which there is a natural recall of early events. The other is the memory that is often associated with post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS). The person suddenly smells, sees and feels as though he or she is actually living the event that took place months or years earlier.Many soldiers who survived horrifying combat experiences have PTSS. This has frequently been discussed in terms of Vietnam veterans who suddenly mentally find themselves in the jungle, hiding from the enemy or assaulting people they see as a threat. The fact that they have not been in Vietnam for decades and that they are experiencing the flashbacks in shopping malls, at home or at work does not change what they are mentally reliving. But PTSS has existed for centuries and has affected men, women and children in the midst of all wars, horrifying natural disasters and other traumatic experiences. This includes physical and sexual abuse when growing up.the PTSS Cheryl was experiencing more and more frequently, in which she found herself seeing, feeling and re-experiencing events from her childhood and adolescence had become overwhelming. She knew she needed to get help.
Cheryl Hersha
We go to Europe to be Americanized.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
They had always dreamed of a large family but have now realized that they would be equally blessed to have even one child.
Jane Green
I am always happy because I have no other choice.
Debasish Mridha
To make a change, you must be: willing to commit, willing to change, willing to have an open mind, and willing to take action!
Tae Yun Kim
I know he's a good person. And he said he was sorry. And I love him. And when you love a person, you have to forgive him sometimes.
Gabrielle Zevin
Why you’ll never see a woman with a bomb in her shoe: we have too much respect for shoes.
Carolyn V. Hamilton
Honesty is the best policy. But insanity is a hell of a lot more effective in court. So your set, McMullen
Lois Greiman
When I feel angry, I want to say something mean, or yell, or hit. But feeling like I want to is not the same as doing it. Feeling can't hurt anyone or get me into trouble, but doing can." (Bunny from picture book)
Cornelia Maude Spelman
If sex is not just about reproduction, it is not just about genes, XY chromosomes, and hormones either. Sex is introduced to explain skeletal structure, mental aptitude, posture, emotional disposition, aesthetic preference, body fat, sexual orientation and responsiveness, athletic ability, social dominance, shape and weight, artistic ability. It is also supposed to explain any number of so-called "instincts", including the nesting instinct, the maternal instinct, and perhaps even the Budweiser instinct.
Riki Anne Wilchins
The other side of the "sacred" is the sight of your beloved in the underworld, dripping with maggots.
Gary Snyder
As humans we have two great spiritual needs. The first is forgiveness, which God has made possible by sending His Son into the world to die for our sins. Our second need, however, is for goodness, which God also made possible by sending the Holy Spirit to dwell within us.
Billy Graham
We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
Joan Didion
I cannot be assured ofexactly what I createdbe it madness and monsteror beauty and light.
Stephanie Hemphill
I wonder if I might be lonelierif I didn't have loneliness
Kelli Russell Agodon
There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.
Jodi Picoult