Quotes by American Authors - Page 1484

They say you should not suffer through the past. You should be able to wear it like a loose garment take it off and let it drop.
Eva Jessye
Consequences need not be the obstacles that I dread, but the direction that I need.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
She looked beautiful,standing there barefoot in her faded jeans. I wanted to take her in my arms, and lift her, and carry her into some untroubled future.Instead, I left her where she was. That's not the world we live in, she'd said, and how right she was,
Stephen King
Each generation produces its oracles and sages, independent thinkers whom serve as cultural bearers. Every generation produces perceptive individuals whose special radiance answers the trumpet call of the pernicious challenges bestowed by their times. These compassionate mavens provide worthy insights on humankind’s gallant attempt to escape its balmy pond of alienation and frigid sea of desolation. Conversations conducted by past and present essayist speaking in consonance between parallel times judiciously reflect the polyphonic cadence of robust jubilation wrought through living purposefully. The coruscating voices of the muses from times of yore manufacture the accordion spine of humankind’s expanding éclat anthology.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Suddenly he knew all the things he should have said.
Erich Maria Remarque
Ah, we shall never have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. It strikes at the foot of the feudal system!
William Dean Howells
We've all received our share of good fortune, so that's my definition of much. A single blessing is all the bounty in the world, and if you've been blessed at all you're meant to pass some of that on. You're meant to set a positive example. That's our responsibility" (20) - Denzel Washington, "So that We Might Follow
Denzel Washington
You're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.
Joss Whedon
And then I notice the music flooding out of every part of the apartment at once — the couch, the walls, even the floor — and I know Bennies alone in Lou’s studio, pouring music down around us. A minute ago it was “Don’t Let Me Down”. Then it was Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”. Now it’s Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger”. Listening, I think, You will never know how much I understand you.
Jennifer Egan
Love comes from the heart, lust comes ...lower
Teresa Mummert
I sing to use the waiting, My bonnet but to tie, And shut the door unto my house; No more to do have I, Till, his best step approaching, We journey to the day, And tell each other how we sang To keep the dark away.
Emily Dickinson
I'll fight when needed, revel when there's an occasion, mourn when there is grief and die if my time comes...But I will not let anyone use me against my will.
Christopher Paolini
The worst prison is not made of metal bars. The worst prison is when your internal reality does not match your external reality.
Yasmin Mogahed
Now she could smell what the jaguar could smell, odors deeper and richer than anything she had experienced before, layers of smell she could read like Fray Tomás had read the words in her father’s book: the wet decay of leaves, the death fear of a mouse, the poisonous cloy of datura, water and mud and insects, the wind carrying the smell of other animals, the wind itself, and the girl, of course, always the girl with her juicy flesh. The girl smelled incredibly good. Should the jaguar do this? Should Teresa eat herself?
Sharman Apt Russell
They warn you that you're gonna have to make sacrifices, but i guess that means different things to different people, like giving up something you really want now for something you've wanted your whole life, or spending less time on yourself, so you can spend more time with someone you love. At some point you might even have to give up your own sense of safety and well being, but after a while it doesn't feel like you're giving up anything at all.
Scrubs J.D
The joyous clamor in my mind drowned out the strange sound outside the car: a humming noise that was gathering speed and growing louder, a roar that was not the waves curling up the beach.
Padma Venkatraman
Confidence is seen, not heard.
Kelly Clarkson
God wants to use you right where you are. Every day you probably come in contact with people who will never enter a church, or talk with a pastor, or open a Bible— and God wants to use you to point them to Christ. You may be the “bridge” God would use to bring them to Himself.
Billy Graham
. . . Absurdism was really just realism seen from close to the bottom.
George Saunders
Autumn said to me, "You see, the best thing about wrong decisions is that they don't prevent you from making the right decisions later on. It's harder, but it's impossible
Siobhan Vivian
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Mark Twain
His heart hurt with the wanting of it, the hurt no less painful for being difficult to explain.
Maggie Stiefvater
I think I would rather have a cat than a sweetheart, after all. They are less trouble, and even the handsomest sweetheart is sadly lacking in fur.
Laura Amy Schlitz
You carry the message you've been seeking, but realization of it is found in healthy retrospection, not among the wilderness of chaotic noise.
T.F. Hodge
It is the great business of every Christian to save souls. People complain that they do not know how to take hold of this matter. Why, the reason is plain enough; they have never studied it. They have never taken the proper pains to qualify themselves for the work. If you do not make it a matter of study, how you may successfully act in building up the kingdom of Christ, you are acting a very wicked and absurd part as a Christian.
Charles Grandison Finney
Promises are like silly jokes, told around a table when the food is good and no one has anything to lose by telling a lie or two - lies should have been a synonym for the word 'promise' in dictionaries, but only a few people knew it.
Cameron Jace
All my life, I've understood the nature of where I come from, but I never thought it might be wicked until now.
Brenna Yovanoff
Of more angst to drivers are the customer ratings systems imposed by the app companies. While most drivers do not have a problem with the notion of being rated, they are concerned that they will receive poor marks for circumstances beyond their control. Customers can give even the most earnest drivers bad ratings for any reason such as bumpy rides over pothole strewn roads, traffic congestion and passengers underestimating how much time they need to reach their destinations. Miscommunication between passengers and drivers can occur because passengers cannot speak the local language, are drunk, or fall asleep and cannot direct the driver to their remote destinations. Perhaps some passengers just do not like the ethnic group to which some drivers appear to belong. Circumstances such as these are clearly the fault of passengers who may rate drivers poorly nonetheless.Drivers with low ratings can be expelled from on-demand taxi services. This unfairness is compounded to the extent that drivers make large investments in their cars, insurance and fuel. Making drivers, who basically invested in a franchise, vulnerable to expulsion from a system because of unfair ratings seems to me to be a potential source of dissention or even litigation. Another concern associated with the taxi app business model is that drivers only have 15 seconds to respond to notices of pick up opportunities. Drivers that fail to respond in such tight windows lose the business. Repeat failures to make timely responses can result in temporary suspensions. This pressure, and related distractions associated with interacting with handsets, is applied simultaneously with all of the challenges of navigating traffic in a variety of weather conditions. Foremost, this is a driving hazard that imperils everyone in the vicinity. It also ties in with the ratings systems because drivers are only rated on the rides they complete. Drivers who claim rides but abandon the customer if it looks like the pickup will be delayed have no ratings risk. Paradoxically, no ratings result in the worst customer service as passengers end up stranded.
David Wanetick
He kept his eyes on mine, his gaze unblinking, and I stared right back into the blue. He moved almost imperceptibly and in the space between a heartbeat his lips touched mine.
Sarah Alderson
Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: 'Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.' He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: 'The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.' He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: 'Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.'If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been.All that we call progress—the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.
Robert G. Ingersoll
I thought you could build a story that would function as a machine or else a complex of machines, each one moving separately, yet part of a process that ultimately would produce an emotion or a sequence of emotions. You could swap out parts, replace them if they got too old. And this time you would build in some redundancy, if only just to handle the stress.One question was: Would the engine still work if you were aware of it, or if you were told how it actually functioned? Maybe this was one of the crucial differences between a story and a machine.
Paul Park
Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.
Geraldine Brooks
Climb the day, Drop your dreams, Possess the day.
Gail Carson Levine
And there, shimmering in the Mist right next to us, was the last person I wanted to see: Mr. D, wearing his leopard-skin jogging suit and rummaging through the refrigerator. He looked up lazily. "Do you mind?"Where's Chiron!" I shouted.How rude." Mr. D took a swig from a jug of grape juice. "Is that how you say hello?"Hello," I amended. "We're about to die! Where's Chiron?
Rick Riordan
...there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening ambition and pride.
Rick Yancey
Real maturity is the ability to imagine the humanity of every person as fully as you believe in your own humanity.
Tobias Wolff
When you write from the heart, it is always beautiful.
Debasish Mridha
Soft flesh mingled with defiant will to create one frustratingly perfect woman.
Michelle M. Pillow
By dinnertime, Amanda had managed to pick off all of her red nail polish purely out of habit. She was disappointed and silently cursed at herself when she remembered not having anymore to put on. She stared at her fingernails for about twenty minutes for lack of something better to do.
Jason Medina
Always find the funny.
Amy Susan Crohn
A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.
Henry Ward Beecher
He raised his hand to brush a stray hair from her face. Instead of dropping his hand, he slid it behind her neck and drew her closer. His earthy pine scent enveloped her. When his lips touched hers, she lost any hope of control.
Lia Davis
Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.
Leo Buscaglia
To express your love for the universe, be like a cloud to dwell in the high altitudes, and never forget to transform yourself into the water of humility.
Debasish Mridha
There’s very little that worrying can do to help our situations. Worrying is like running on a treadmill…it gives us an opportunity to sweat but gets us absolutely nowhere. Worrying skews our reality, suppresses the immune system, promotes coronary disease, and plagues us with digestive problems. It’s clear…when the soul is heavy the body feels the weight. Do yourself a favor. Lighten up. Take a deep breath, clear your mind and focus your energy on the things you can change rather than on the things you can’t. Worry is the enemy of optimism and personal progress. ~Jason Versey
Jason Versey
Are we concentrating more on the kingdom of this world than on the kingdom that is not of this world?
Philip Yancey
This is the hardest part— That boy is not made of fists. That boy learned how to braid my hair. These things do not un-truth themselveswhen the first door slams.I did not stop loving himall the months I was holding my breath.
Brenna Twohy
If I hadn’t stopped to thank the ghoul, I might not be covered in rotting, slimy, dead guy. I shook my head ruefully and continued walking. No good deed goes unpunished.
E.J. Stevens
I’m fairly certain, Captain,” she said, “that the more you discover about me, the more you will dislike me. Therefore, let’s cut to the chase and acknowledge that we don’t like each other. Then we won’t have to bother with the in-between part.”She was so bloody frank and practical about the whole thing that Christopher couldn’t help but be amused.“I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”“Why not?”“Because when you said that just now, I found myself starting to like you.”“You’ll recover,” she said.Her decisive tone made him want to smile. “It’s getting worse, actually,” he told her. “Now I’m absolutely convinced that I like you.”Beatrix gave him a patently skeptical stare. “What about my hedgehog? Do you like her, too?”Christopher considered that. “Affection for rodents can’t be rushed.”“Medusa isn’t a rodent. She’s an erinaceid.
Lisa Kleypas
He seemed not to know the uses of silence.
Ursula K Le Guin
By forgiving others, you consciously cut ties with the negative energies that are binding you.
Kim Ha Campbell
I see I have this patience to wait it out, and the truth is no matter how dark I feel I would never take my own life, because when the darkness is over, then what a blessing is the feeblest ray of light!
Valerie Martin
The church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a "supportive institution" and our clergy as members of a "helping profession". The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.
Stanley Hauerwas
I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and half an hour later you're somewhere you didn't expect to be. It doesn't work that same way in books, does it? Even if you have an encyclopedia, the trail isn't that crazy. I like that aspect of it.
David Sedaris
Actually being sixty-five isn't so bad. As a matter of fact I rather like being called a sexagenarian. At this time of life it sounds like flattery.
James Humes
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Thomas Jefferson
Courage comes from a heart that is CONVINCED it is loved.
Beth Moore
They urge us to study our history that we might learn from past tragedies and errors. But sometimes I think it's actually a good thing that humanity so easily forgets. The haze that eventually claims old suffering often enables us to move on.
Richelle E. Goodrich
To see, all one has to do is look. To hear, all one has to do is listen.
Ben Chapman
Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.
Jack Kerouac