Quotes by American Authors - Page 1676

I just don't see the point of not eating cheese. I mean, if God didn't want us to eat cheese, would he have let man invent it?
Lisa Samson
What's talent but the ability to get away with something?
Tennessee Williams
Being married definitely took work. When we fought, I felt like I wanted to float away and drown, whereas before I knew I could walk away without any strings attached.
Brenda Perlin
The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.
John Dewey
All facades fall sometime, then the mask comes off and the real heart is seen.
Jessiqua Wittman
Historiography -- commonly and often simultaneously defined as the study of historians' scholarship, how history has been and is contrived, the history of historical writing, and the body of historical scholarship on historical subject matter -- is, therefore, essential to understand when studying history.
Pero Gaglo Dagbovie
Paul tells us that, "The wages of sin is death." That's the bill. Our choice to sin has created a barrier between us and God, taken a toll on our relationship with Him that we can't fix, repair, or pay off on our own. Let's not minimize the situation. We've lived in offense to a holy, righteous God, who reigns in justice. We deserve death for what we've done. Like the Prodigal Son, we've robbed honor from our Father. We have scorned His provision and fled from His house. We have chosen wild living with strangers over a relationship with Him. Like the Prodigal Son, we've told God we'd be better off if He were dead. We've lived in ways that prove our distrust and disbelief in Him. We've chosen a path that leads to starvation and death, so that's what we deserve. Despite all of this, God offers us a brand-new inheritance -- one that has been reclaimed and redeemed by His Son, Jesus Christ, who came to earth and died for our sins. The bill was totaled up, and Christ died to settle that bill. After being crucified, He rose to life again, and He now beckons us home, having prepared a place for us. In the fullness of our sin, God responded with the fullness of His grace through Jesus Christ.
Kyle Idleman
Congratulations, he said. "That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen." His expression was a mix of awe and disbelief. "Ever.
Patrick Rothfuss
I did that girly little sighing thing you do when you can't handle all the sweetness anymore and bit my lip.
Shelly Crane
At first sight, joy seems to be connected with being different. When you receive a compliment or win an award, you experience the joy of not being the same as others. You are faster, smarter, more beautiful, and it is that difference that brings you joy. But such joy is very temporary. True joy is hidden where we are the same as other people: fragile and mortal. It is the joy of belonging to the human race. It is the joy of being with others as a friend, a companion, a fellow traveler. This is the joy of Jesus, who is Emmanuel: God-with-us.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Men and boys always want to go fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently.
Kate DiCamillo
Life holds so much so much to be happy about always. Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can be felt only if you don't set any conditions.
Artur Rubinstein
At first, he talked about the flowers in the garden behind his country house in Surrey. His voice still had its Midlands accent but was soft now and barely audible. He knew the plants by name and took a few minutes with each of them: ageratum, coreopsis, echinacea, rudbeckia. The yarrow, he said, had rose-red flowers on two-foot stems. Achillea millefolium, the plant Achilles used to heal wounds.
Frederick Weisel
Bruises and dried blood covered her face, giving the illusion of chicken pox.
Yawatta Hosby
The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world’s oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those “iron men in wooden boats” created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history.
Eric Jay Dolin
Dreams and freedom are the same. In order for them to be, they come with a price.
Criss Jami
Don’t worry…three vampire meanies and a horse won’t keep me away from you.” Kalina looked at Jaegar. Jaegar shrugged. “If you don’t get it, it’s before your time.” “And what time is that?” “The Dark Ages…that’s why you’ve never heard of it before. Everything was kept in the dark…
Kailin Gow
When you care more if someone else lives than you do about yourself, is that what love is?
Judi Picoult
You may discover that the very aspects which make it most unendurable are what gives New York its meaning. Its inconsistencies and anonymity, its seeming indifference to you and every other individual is really what makes it a safe haven for individuals everywhere (Maeve Brennan)
Elizabeth Winder
Look at this woman. This beauty. What an act of grace. What a gift she gave me.Shame makes people abandon their children and drink themselves to death. It also keeps us from true happiness. An apology is a glorious release. Anastasia gave me a huge gift. That e-mail changed me. It rearranged my molecules. She has lived a life of struggle and decided not to pick up the armor. She teaches me about compassion. She makes her journey about open hearts. She is not ashamed.Thank you thank you thank you.
Amy Poehler
That's what mild television fame is like: it's like walking through the world with your fly down.
Dave Holmes
she thought of the mix of kids in her class and in Melissa’s and she knew that the future could be bright. No one had tried to say she didn’t have a right to be in that school, or acted interested in who her ancestors were, but they had been interested in who she was and where she had moved from. They wanted to know what she did and wore and liked.
Dixie Dawn Miller Goode
He was everything I needed because his entire character had been molded by my deepest wants and desires. He was my rock when I cried, my playmate when I laughed, and my hero when I needed to imagine that one existed for me.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I am very happyBecause I have conquered myselfAnd not the world.I am very happyBecause I have loved the worldAnd not myself.
Sri Chinmoy
Tell me why the gardener trims and prunes his rosebushes, sometimes cutting away productive branches, and I will tell you why God’s people are afflicted. God’s hand never slips.
Billy Graham
I'd crossed a border—Speaking openly, exposing the weak girl I'd been, I was no longer her.
Aspen Matis
The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.
Arthur Miller
Fear attracts the darkness. When you have no fear, the darkness fears you.
Suzy Kassem
The world is going crazy, Karl. And when the world is crazy, a sane man is never okay." from The Berlin Boxing Club
R. Sharenow
Morality means choice. Choice means priorities. Priorities mean a hierarchy. A hierarchy means something at the top, a standard. That is the greatest good. If you have no greatest good, you have no hierarchy, you have no priorities. If you have no priorities, you cannot make intelligent choices. If you cannot make intelligent moral choices, you have no morality. You can still guide your life by your feelings or by social fashions, but that is not choice – not free, responsible, moral choice. Both feelings and fashions push you; you are passive. But moral choice is your own doing; you are active. You are responsible for your choices but not for your feelings or for your environment’s fashions.
Peter Kreeft
I loved Verti. Until she jumped. That is when I felt Vertigo.
James Hauenstein
There is fact in every fiction and truth in every lie.
Krisi Keley
Every genuinely new technology has a genuinely new way of breaking – and every now and then, those malfunctions open a new door to the adjacent possible. Sometimes the way a new technology breaks is almost as interesting as the way it works.
Steven Johnson
Power is not powerful without wisdom.
Debasish Mridha
It's not that I don't believe you," Peter managed. "I'm sorry. It's just that...it's only a story.""Perhaps." She shrugged. "And perheps someday someone will say those very words about you, Peter. What do you say to that?
Justin Cronin
there are few things harder to imagine than other people’s conversations about yourself.
Jonathan Franzen
Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you.And then it's over.
Noah Hawley
I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.
John Steinbeck
I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face.
J.D. Salinger
When I arrived at her door, with the weight of the entire world on my shoulders, she drew me into her arms and eased all my stress away. She comforted and spent time with me when she didn’t have to. She didn’t know me at all, had no idea who I was or what I intended for her, whether passion or pain. But her heart led her forward, that beautiful heart I wanted for myself. So when the moment came to kiss her, as we stood in the water at the beach, I seized it like a desperate man. I was a mad one on the edge of insanity and she was the tonic I needed.
Kenya Wright
Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.
Seth Godin
Oh.” My dad actually looked sheepish. “It’s one o’clock in the morning and I was going to tell you to shut the monkey up and go to bed. I didn’t realise what was going on in here.”“What’s going on in here?” Cameron asked suspiciously.“Maturity.” My dad backed out of the room and closed the door.
Jennifer Echols
Mommy we're not going to be poor again are we? "Not as long as you have that rare blood type."
Brett Butler
I choose my life to this free. I choose my life to be this way
Thomas Paine
If I were a carpenter, I would build you a window to my soul. But I would leave that window shut and locked, so that every time you tried to look through it all you would see is your own reflection. You would see that my soul is a reflection of you.
Colleen Hoover
[Some scientific] experiments…tell us that what we consider the objective world depends in some measure on our own conscious processes. There is no fixed eternal reality……… true understanding is not to be achieved with the rational mind.
Larry Dossey
There's a moment in every woman's life when she knows that for once, she stood on her own two feet, faced the world, and flipped it off. I just had that moment, and it feels fucking awsome.
Rachel Firasek
The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.
Diana Gabaldon
I used to think the opposite of control was chaos. But it's not. The opposite of control is surrender.
Erin Loechner
Nothing in my life would mean anything if you weren't here to share it. There'd be no reason to get up in the morning without you to light the sun with your smile.
Maggie Osborne
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
Ursula K Le Guin
To get through the night, I sometimes imagined the sky filled with a canopy of stars. I imagined that each star contained the soul of a girl or boy who had died too young, and the light the stars gave off was their brightness.
Jill Bialosky
Romance novels feature nuanced portrayals of female characters having adventures, making choices, and accepting themselves just as they are. When we say these stories are silly and unrealistic, we are telling young girls not to expect to be the heroines in their own real lives.
Maya Rodale
…In this way that he sought to control the very passage of his life, deftly and without forethought, yet precisely and with enormous care. Part of it was to allow what was enormous, what was profound, without limiting it.
Jesse Ball
Perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue.
Donna Leon
Quote is taken from Chapter 1:A decade ago when Isabel’s husband Max had died, they’d moved in together and merged their possessions. Neither sister brought any fussy teapots, canaries, sachets, or doilies, but lots of other stuff had to either stay or go. Looking at the lime green gave Alma the willies. Her suggestion to slipcover it in a more subdued color had garnered Isabel’s frosty stare, and Alma had dropped the matter.
Ed Lynskey
We need a conversion of morals," the elderly man said. "Not just superficially, but profoundly. And in both races. We need a great saint-some enlightened common sense. Otherwise, we'll never have the right answers...
John Howard Griffin
Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson
I thought of what pride would look like, a jowly old guy in a smoking jacket. Vanity was a tall, beautiful woman with a face like a mask. Envy was a treasure-hoarding dragon, dainty and diabolical. As I sketched in the dragon's face, I gave her eyebrows like mine, my turtle necklace around its scaly neck. Xanda drew them as cliffs and valleys, irrevocably linked pride as a mountain, envy as a valley, hating its lowness and longing to reach, overtake, conquer. She drew vanity as a volcano with an abyss at its core.
Holly Cupala
Nothing comforted Sabine like long division. That was how she had passed time waiting for Phan and then Parsifal to come back from their tests. She figured the square root of the date while other people knit and read. Sabine blamed much of the world's unhappiness on the advent of calculators.
Ann Patchett