Quotes by American Authors - Page 1547

Every opportunity worth pursuing comes with a price tag. Either sweat or sacrifice. Sometimes both.

Because all her feelings for him – hot and beautiful in her heart – turned to gobbledygook in her mouth.

The truist indication of gratitude is to return what you are grateful for.

Sometimes", said Miss Phillips, "the thing you dread doing the very thing you should do, just so you can stop thinking about it.

Comedians love people to point and laugh at them, even if they are not funny, naturists don't, no matter how funny they are.

each hour is a room of shame, and I amswimming, swimming, holding my head up,smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,like being naked with the clothed, or beinga child, having to try to behavewhile hating the terms of your life.

Then I shall bid thee goodnight, my dear. Sweet pixies watch over the dusty moonlight of your dreams, Jessameine.

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

We are all sinners who have been saved by Grace. We have not been saved from sinning, but we have been redeemed despite it".~ R. Alan Woods [2012]

You could just tell when a person belonged somewhere. That is something you can't fake, no matter how hard you try

No one's ever going to shag you if you cry all the time.

…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.

I spy the eyes before me to be those of the celestial warrior the legends of men call Michael.

Writers are cannibals. They really are. They are predators, and if you are friends with them, and if you say anything funny at dinner, or if anything good happens to you, you are in big trouble.

Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than “politics.” They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters.

Concentrate your energies your thoughts and your capital. ... The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

If we were to plot the distance between where you are RIGHT NOW and the nearest good idea, it would describe a line too big to fit inside the universe.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe in ghosts. The ghosts believe in you.

I thought it was love, but it wasn't. It was a need to be the right girl for him. I just couldn't understand why I wasn't good enough, or how he could marry her.

If we became a pal to what scared us the most, we could find a simple way to ease all that bothered us, we would find peace, peace that we could live with.

What's more, we had discovered that people have several times more potential for growth, when they invest energy in developing their strenghts instead of correcting their deficiencies.

Many times in life I've regretted the things I've said without thinking. But I've never regretted the things I said nearly as much as the words I left unspoken.

Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole they hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny's body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes.I was paralyzed. I couldn't quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn't described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray. I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face.I looked over to Jenks who had on odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline hag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow pus from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame.Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. 'Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.' I declined, turning away.Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man's chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand.'Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it... now!' And he stepped away.I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up.When I looked back, Skorzeny's hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake.Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn't paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defence at hand,—the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defence which peasants of the Middle Age used and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. To-day the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime. Nor is this situation peculiar to the Southern United States, is it not rather the only method by which undeveloped races have gained the right to share modern culture? The price of culture is a Lie.

Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.

But why give a man something it's so hard to earn? In that respect women are really thick. They're the daughters of rigidity. They need a man to feel secure but they don't realize that the one thing they should be afraid of is men. They don't know how to run their lives. They have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of someone else. Whores are the worst, patron, believe me. They throw their lives away working for some pimp, smile when he beats them, feel proud when he's well dressed, with his gold teeth and rings on his fingers, and when he goes off and takes up with a woman half their age they forgive him everything because 'he's a man.

I thought he should have realized sooner that important people don't show up very often, and you should hold on to them when they do. Maybe I was smarter than he was all along, because that was something I'd always known.

Standing up for oneself is not always easy but it is often the only way to walk our true life path. The beaten path only gets you where most people go. Be original and explore new roads.

You have to fall in love with hanging around words.

What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?

When it begins, where it goes how it ends...It all comes down to you.

Hope to sin only in the service of waking up.

In the horrors of war, please bring me peace.

She looked up and their eyes locked. “Want to be my birthday present?” she asked in a breathy whisper.Chase’s mother didn’t raise any fools. He released her hips and trailed his hand down her arm until their fingers entwined.“Let’s get out of here.”He tugged her from the dance floor, trying not to rush like he was running from a fire. But, damn. There was a fire in his britches.

People don't trade money for things when they value their money more highly than they value the things.

In the Old Testament…God is the owner of the vineyard. Here He is the Keeper, the Farmer, the One who takes care of the vineyard. Jesus is the genuine Vine, and the Father takes care of Him…In the Old Testament it is prophesied that the Lord Jesus would grow up before Him as a tender plant and as a root out of the dry ground. Think how often the Father intervened to save Jesus from the devil who wished to slay Him. The Father is the One who cared for the Vine, and He will care for the branches, too.

People change. I mean you barely know who you are when you enter, and you spend that time figuring out what you want from life, and who you want in it. The next thing you know, the people you always thought would be there, aren't. A nd the person you thought you could trust with everything, isn't the person you ever knew at all.

She knew she could answer it. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other even when every step hurt. And she knew there was pain in the journey, but there was also great beauty. She’d seen it standing on rooftops and in green eyes and in the smallest, ugliest rock. She would find the answer.

Some things in life are worth waiting for.

It was a beautiful lie that they had all been telling themselves—that you could have magic without monsters.

There were always those passengers who came aboard bearing grudges against the modern age.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

That wasn’t blood. It was love. It pours out of you when you lose faith.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

I thought, you see, that there must be some connection between money and memorable experience; between rare wine and rare intelligence. In short, I was a romantic idiot.

The DARRYL part of him that exploded on stage made its spellbinding, turbulent presence most felt off stage when we made love. He was a symphony of contradiction; tender, yet fierce; sweet, yet riotous; impassioned, yet leisurely; giving, yet unquenchable. We lay there naked on the carpet a long time afterward, both too depleted—and too content—to move.

World opinion, though sharply divided on nuclear tests and the risk of atmospheric pollution, could congratulate itself on being united in its opposition to cannibalism. No country in the world was prepared to support the custom of eating the dead, though the right of governments to kill people, individually or by hundreds of thousands, was not questioned for a moment.

With no fact as a referent, what is normative is purely a matter of preference.

Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned. Kell had seen what happened when power warred with the body, watched it darken in the veins of corrupted men, turning their blood from crimson to black. If red was the color of magic in balance---of harmony between power and humanity---then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint.

Although I’ve been thoroughly conditioned by pain to see it otherwise, an ending is nothing more than the backside of a beginning.

Our opportunities to give of ourselves are indeed limitless, but they are also perishable. There are hearts to gladden. There are kind words to say. There are gifts to be given. There are deeds to be done. There are souls to be saved.As we remember that “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God,” (Mosiah 2:17) we will not find ourselves in the unenviable position of Jacob Marley’s ghost, who spoke to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s immortal "Christmas Carol." Marley spoke sadly of opportunities lost. Said he: 'Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'Marley added: 'Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'Fortunately, as we know, Ebenezer Scrooge changed his life for the better. I love his line, 'I am not the man I was.'Why is Dickens’ "Christmas Carol" so popular? Why is it ever new? I personally feel it is inspired of God. It brings out the best within human nature. It gives hope. It motivates change. We can turn from the paths which would lead us down and, with a song in our hearts, follow a star and walk toward the light. We can quicken our step, bolster our courage, and bask in the sunlight of truth. We can hear more clearly the laughter of little children. We can dry the tear of the weeping. We can comfort the dying by sharing the promise of eternal life. If we lift one weary hand which hangs down, if we bring peace to one struggling soul, if we give as did the Master, we can—by showing the way—become a guiding star for some lost mariner.

The problem is you make the tricks look good. You are a brilliant acrobat, and a witty comedian. You are skillful. People want a fool to be foolish--trip on banana peels and grin and spout nonsense. These men want fools to make them feel better about themselves, not to remind them what they lack.

We must leave this terrifying place to-morrow and go searching for sunshine.

Women will buy products in an attempt to become the impossible goal. Men will buy products in an attempt to mate with the impossible goal.

Okay.' I can feel the letters vomit off my tongue.O.K.A. Y.I watch the vet insert the syringe into the catheter and inject the second drug. And then the adventures come flooding back:The puppy farm.The gentle untying of the shoelace.THIS! IS! MY! HOME! NOW!Our first night together.Running on the beach.Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.Shared ice-cream cones.Thanksgivings.Tofurky.Car rides.Laughter.Eye rain.Chicken and rice.Paralysis.Surgery.Christmases.Walks.Dog parks.Squirrel chasing.Naps.Snuggling.'Fishful Thinking.'The adventure at sea.Gentle kisses.Manic kisses.More eye rain.So much eye rain.Red ball.The veterinarian holds a stethoscope up to Lily's chest, listening for her heartbeat.All dogs go to heaven.'Your mother's name is Witchie-Poo.' I stroke Lily behind her ears the way that used to calm her. 'Look for her.'OH FUCK IT HURTS.I barely whisper. 'She will take care of you.

She wanted to go over and hug his tears away, but she was too frightened.

sometimes we are so lonely that we are more ready to fall in love with the concept of a person than the person in itself. Some people are thirsty for life, while others are hungry for love - and a girl who travels will know that there have been people who have fallen in love with her for the wrong reasons

In science, progress is possible. In fact, if one believes in Bayes' theorem, scientific progress is inevitable as predictions are made and as beliefs are tested and refined.

True love is unbounded, unmitigated, and lasts forever. It never diminishes with time and distance.