Quotes by American Authors - Page 1463

Exactly. I think the original tantric Buddhists took notice of was some very wise old people who never studied in their youth, but took part in a range of risk-taking adventures when they were younger, and finally became wise when they reflected upon their lives in old age. There is only one problem.”“Which is?”“Risk-taking is a way to die young. It is dangerous and you may forfeit the opportunity to grow old. An early death is not a sure path to wisdom in old age,” Ranjit said, running his finger around the inside of the pipe bowl, “and if you survive without reflecting, then you simply become an old degenerate.
Joe Niemczura
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Christopher Reeve
Even the wise appear foolish before one who brings peace to another.
Phoenix Desmond
If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question...you may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world.
Richard Feynman
It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.
Malcolm X
For me it has always been easier here, where only the fundamentals count, to learn what every man must learn in this world.""And that, my lord?""Enough of the meaning of life to be ready to die.
Margaret Craven
When change happens, you have a choice for how you are going to respond. You can either lose your composure and react impetuously or use the event or situation as a learning opportunity to shift your mindset and respond appropriately. Begin to notice your responses when changes occur and do your best to choose a breakthrough over a breakdown.
Susan C.Young
Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Okay. Some things were made of hope. But not this thing. This thing he was doing, that was made of surrender. He did it anyway. At least when you surrendered, you had time to kiss the people you loved good-bye.
Amy Lane
One of the greatest keys to happiness is learning how to accept reality while stretching forth to create a new one.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
You’ve never had someone you love snatched,” I shot back, annoyed by her ignorance. “Any sense of safety kind of bites it after that. You watch your back because no one else can.
Katherine McIntyre
It was like diving into winter waves. "I can't," I told him."Why not?""Because I need to find out who I am by myself before I can be with anyone else.
Louise Hawes
Nature is always talking to you, smiling to you, and singing to you. To understand, you just have to be open to listen with your heart and soul.
Debasish Mridha
What we prepare for is what we shall get.
William Graham Sumner
Beauty without grace is like a fish far displaced from the water and looking at this kind of beauty is like watching that fish die right there on the cement in front of you.
C. JoyBell C.
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
Cormac McCarthy
No sign of Marissa yet though I heard her clunking around in the bathroom so she was probably doing whatever girls do to make themselves presentable. Poor things. It didn't take any time at all for us guys to rejoin the world and still be our handsome selves.
Terry Spear
Some biblical scholars believe that the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” 79 So why did our foraging ancestors leave Eden? For many, it was never an explicit choice: they had multiplied themselves into a Malthusian trap in which the fat of the land could no longer support them, and they had to grow their food themselves. The states emerged only later, and the foragers who lived at their frontiers could either be absorbed into them or hold out in their old way of life. For those who had the choice, Eden may have been just too dangerous. A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple of inches in height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared
Steven Pinker
For a moment i thought i had died and gone to heaven. Now i see that i am very much alive, and heaven has been brought to me
Shannon Dermott
I am tired of having handsshe saidI want wings —But what will you do without your handsto be human?I am tired of humanshe saidI want to live on the sun —
Louise Glück
And speaking of this wonderful machine:[840] I’m puzzled by the difference between, the kind Which goes on solely in the poet’s mind,A testing of performing words, while he,The other kind, much more decorous, whenHe’s in his study writing with a pen. In method B the hand supports the thought,The abstract battle is concretely fought.The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar[850] A canceled sunset or restore a star,And thus it physically guides the phraseToward faint daylight through the inky maze. is agony! The brainIs soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.A muse in overalls directs the drill Which grinds and which no effort of the willCan interrupt, while the automatonIs taking off what he has just put on Or walking briskly to the corner store [860] To buy the paper he has read before.
Vladimir Nabokov
Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities.
Sugar Ray Leonard
One look at the officials in the American Consulate where we went for dreary paper routines was enough to make you realize what was wrong with American 'diplomacy' throughout the Fellaheen world: - stiff offcious squares with contempt even for their own Americans who happened not to wear neckties, as tho a necktie or whatever it stands for meant anything to the hungry Berbers who came into Tangiers every Saturday morning on meek asses, like Christ, carrying baskets of pitiful fruit or dates, and returned at dusk to silhouetted parades along the hill by the railroad track. The railroad track where barefooted prophets still walked and taught the Koran to children along the way. Why didn't the American consul ever walk into the urchin hall where Mohammed Maye sat smoking? or squat in behind empty buildings with old Arabs who talked with their hands? or any thing? Instead it's all private limousines, hotel restaurants, parties in the suburbs, an endless phoney rejection in the name of 'democracy' of all that's pith and moment of every land.
Jack Kerouac
In the white newspapers, they use it against us. They make the Panthers look like we all just want to rip the throats out of some white folks for no good reason. We have good reasons, but we still don't want to do that.
Kekla Magoon
See, I’m a great believer in the power of negative thought. And in an age of affirmation, of self-help and self-love, of the rebirth of wide-eyed idealism and the power of positive thinking — I’m happy to be a champion of skepticism and doubt. That night, I rediscovered my role, my reason, and my rage.
Phillip Andrew Bennett Low
Alright! You sir, you sir, how about a shave?Come and visit your good friend Sweeney.You sir, too sir? Welcome to the grave.I will have vengenance.I will have salvation.Who sir, you sir?No ones in the chair, Come on! Come on!Sweeney's. waiting. I want you bleeders.You sir! Anybody!Gentlemen now don't be shy!Not one man, no, nor ten men.Nor a hundred can assuage me.I will have you!And I will get him back even as he gloatsIn the meantime I'll practice on less honorable throats.And my Lucy lies in ashesAnd I'll never see my girl again.But the work waits!I'm alive at last!And I'm full of joy!
Stephen Sondheim
He cupped his hand around her cheek, and she marveled at how perfectly his palm fit her cheek. His fingers in her hair, she waited, maybe for an eternity, for his lips to meet hers. When they did it was like being inside an exploding star. Time and space became irrelevant. She slipped her arms under his, clinging to him, his body the only thing stopping her from drifting away, untethered in space. His hand on her back slipped under layers of clothes, finding her skin. He pulled her close, and she leaned into him, feeling like she could never be close enough to him.
Summer Hines
We want the people around us to show us a satisfactory measure of genuine empathy, but no one has any idea what that looks like. This puts everyone in the precarious position of guaranteed failure. I know that no one knows how to deal with stuff like this. There are no experts here.
Russ Ramsey
If we read the Bible as carefully and as regularly as we read the daily papers, we would be as familiar with and as well informed about God as we are about our favorite player’s batting average during baseball season!
Billy Graham
Please tell me your master isn't Aeolus.""That airhead?" Favonius snorted. "No, of course not.""He means Eros." Nico's voice turned edgy. "Cupid, in Latin."Favonius smiled. "Very good, Nico di Angelo. I'm glad to see you again, by the way. It's been a long time.
Rick Riordan
There is a big difference between having your heart broken and being the one responsible for a broken heart. I was twelve years old and had already experienced both.
Eveli Acosta
Space is a precious thing to waste. You don't want to fill your house with anything that doesn't directly add to your happiness.
Sherry Petersik
As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes. But in the Vatican—we have only to recall the Inquisition—the hands that are now raised in appeals to the 'Most Merciful' are crimsoned. They have been steeped in blood!
John William Draper
It's time to undo Rahim.
Nadia Hashimi
All writers are different, each have their own artist way they go about telling a story. The only thing they have in common, is they write.
Lori Lesko
There are two good reasons to put your napkin in your lap. One is that food might spill in your lap, and it is better to stain the napkin than your clothing. The other is that it can serve as a perfect hiding place. Practically nobody is nosey enough to take the napkin off a lap to see what is hidden there.
Lemony Snicket
. . . And as fall turned to winter, the Darlington peach trees started dropping their leaves again, gently, like they were letting them go. It wasnt the same as giving them up. It wasnt the same as losing them.
Jodi Lynn Anderson
Dating is probably the most fraught human interaction there is. You're sizing people up to see if they're worth your time and attention, and they're doing the same to you. It's meritocracy applied to personal life, but there's no accountability. We submit ourselves to these intimate inspections and simultaneously inflict them on others and try to keep our psyches intact - to keep from becoming cold and callous - and we hope that at the end of it we wind up happier than our grandparents, who didn't spend this vast period of their lives, these prime years, so thoroughly alone, coldly and explicitly anatomized again and again.
Adelle Waldman
So much enthusiasm about the non-existence of God is somewhat bewildering, as no one appears to be nearly as excited about a similar absence of belief in unicorns, vampires, werewolves, astrology, nation-building, or the Labor Theory of Value. Nor is anyone dedicating much of their time to writing books and giving speeches at universities and conferences with the avowed goal of convincing others not to believe in them either.
Vox Day
Revenge could steal a man's life until there was nothing left but emptiness.
Louis L'Amour
She was one of those exceptional children who do still spend time outside, in solitude. In her case nature represented beauty - and refuge. "It's so peaceful out there and the air smells so good. I mean, it's polluted, but not as much as the city air. For me, it's completely different there," she said. "It's like you're free when you go out there. It's your own time. Sometimes I go there when I'm mad - and then, just with the peacefulness, I'm better. I can come back home happy, and my mom doesn't even know why."     The she described her special part of the woods.     "I had a place. There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I'd dug a big hole there, and sometimes I'd take a tent back there, or a blanket, and just lie down in the hole, and look up at the trees and sky. Sometimes I'd fall asleep back there. I just felt free; it was like my place, and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to go down there almost every day."     The young poet's face flushed. Her voice thickened.     "And then they just cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me.
Richard Louv
Neither of us, it turns out, has been the only one who lost someone she loved.
Jodi Picoult
Why, Mr. Anderson?, Why, why?. Why do you do it? Why, why get up?.Why keep fighting?. Do you believe you're fighting...for something?.For more than your survival?. Can you tell me what it is?. Do you even know?; Is it freedom?, Or truth?.Perhaps peace?. Could it be for love?Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although... only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now, You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson?. Why?, Why do you persist?. Agent Smith ( Matrix Revolutions Movie, 2003 ).
William Irwin
These are NOT times for dramatization and talking, but meditation and praying.
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
They didn't really have a childhood. Just them and Mom and then her liver went and she died and it was just them. Except they never learned to be grown-ups. And they never learned to be just kids, either. Stuck in never-never land. Kinda sad.
Gerry Boyle
Your heart’s strength is measured by how hard it holds on. Your self worth and faith is measured by finally letting go. However, your peace is measured by how long you don’t look back.
Shannon L. Alder
Be wise like water and adapt, adjust, and appreciate whomever you are with and wherever you are.
Debasish Mridha
What life she had left could be measured in hours. Small recompense though they were, they belonged to me now. I had only to claim them.
Kim van Alkemade
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
Thomas Jefferson
Occam's Razor is a term plagiarized by the fact it is not easy to find its source and meaning. My attempts to find an author lead me nowhere, and I can only find unsatisfactory descriptions of how it works. Therefore, it is meaningless to me and I will use it as a placeholder to define:That which is unnecessary tends to be false.Necessity is by purpose.Therefore, purpose writes itself.Now, I have a tool.
Michael Brett Turner
I believe that the place where an animal dies is a sacred one. There is a need to bring ritual into the conventional slaughter plants and use as a means to shape people's behavior. It would help prevent people from becoming numbed, callous, or cruel. The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence. In addition to developing better designs and making equipment to insure the humane treatments of all animals, that would be my contribution.
Temple Grandin
it's back to school time. or as home-schoolers call it, stay-where-you-are time.
Stephen Colbert
All too often, we are pleasing the enemy MORE than we are pleasing God by living defeated. Jesus did not die for us to walk around defeated. You have the POWER to turn any situation around that you want to.
Sandra M. Michelle
You can't sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock. You've got to throw the ball over the damn plate and give the other man his chance. That's why baseball is the greatest game of them all.
Earl Weaver
Stay safe. I want to see you again when all this is done.
Marie Lu
The spectacle of the shooting suggest an event out of time, as if the killing of black people with white-supremacist justification interrupts anything other than regular television programming. But Dylan Storm Roof did not create himself from nothing. He as grown up with the rhetoric and orientation of racism.
Jesmyn Ward
When we first believe we think we can do it all; our passion is so strong. But after a time we start to learn that passion doesn't equal strength, and our sinful nature rears its ugly head.
Hayley DiMarco
Things must be done, life must go on. Life would go on, even if every breath she took hurt, even if her joints ached when she moved. Sorry and loneliness were an insidious evil, for they lived in the mind. One could not take a tonic and see them dissipate.
Kristen Callihan
The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for cent
James Madison
The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining, just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature.
Corliss Lamont