Quotes by American Authors - Page 1698

Are we our bodies? Is a small person less than a big person, then? If we were our bodies, then when we lost an arm, or a leg, would we be less, would we begin to fade from existence? No. We are the same person.We are not our bodies; we are our thoughts. As they form, they define who we are, and create the reality of our existence.
Terry Goodkind
A customer facing crucial decisions: What should I wipe myself with? What should I brush with? His personal hygiene was deteriorating rapidly as he stared at the rows of possibilities, sweating profusely. Would he ever bathe again?
Benson Bruno
Think of every fairy-tale villainess you've ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and remember that somewhere, sometime, they've all been real.
Jim Butcher
He told me and Rafe to stay put in case you came home, burn the note and get hot water and disinfectant and bandages rea
Tana French
Times will change. Peace changes even the worst of killers," Ruth said."Into what?" Ezekiel asked.
Peter Tieryas
There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous [founding nations upon superstition]; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history... [T]he detail of the formation of the American governments... may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven... it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses... Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind.[A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America, 1787]
John Adams
The nature of the universe probably depends heavily on who is the actual protagonist. Lately I've been suspecting it's one of my cats.
Wil McCarthy
To be the love, dissolve into love.
Debasish Mridha
Hey, it’s Col. I’m standing in a soybean field outside of Gutshot, Tennessee, which is a long story, and it’s hot. K. I’m standing here sweating like I had hyperhidrosis, that disease where you sweat a lot. Crap. That’s not interesting. But anyway, it’s hot, and so I’m thinking about cold to stay cool. And I was remembering walking through the snow coming back from the ridiculous movie. Do you remember that, K? We were on Giddings, and the snow made it so quiet, I couldn’t hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it’s hot, and dead quiet again, and I love you still.
John Green
Have regular hours for work and play make each day both useful and pleasant and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful old age will bring few regrets and life will become a beautiful success.
Louisa May Alcott
Reading, my earliest refuge in the unknown world, made me want to venture into it.
Maureen Corrigan
The body, I started to learn, was not a secondary entity. The mind contained very few truths that the body withheld. There was little of import in an encounter between two bodies that would fail to be revealed rather quickly. The epistolary run up to the date only rarely revealed the truth of a man's good humor or introversion, his anxiety or social grace. Until the bodies were introduced, seduction was only provisional.
Emily Witt
It seemed my wholelife was composed of these disjointedfractions of time, hanging around in onepublic place and then another, as if I werewaiting for trains that never came. And, likeone of those ghosts who are said to lingeraround depots late at night, askingpassersby for the timetable of the MidnightExpress that derailed twenty years before, Iwandered from light to light until thatdreaded hour when all the doors closed and,stepping from the world of warmth andpeople and conversation overheard, I feltthe old familiar cold twist through my bonesagain and then it was all forgotten, thewarmth, the lights; I had never been warmin my life, ever.
Donna Tartt
You gotta trust someone sometime. They're either gonna f**k you over or they're not. Can't live in fear, and all that, or you'll miss out.
Darien Cox
When we encourage othersWith no personal motives,We raise high, very high,Humanity's progress-standard.
Sri Chinmoy
She comes closer to me. She is beautiful, in the way lightning striking across a storm-swept sky is beautiful: dangerous and distant.
Kate Rooper
Why do the living assume the dead know better than we do?Like they gained some knowledge by dying, but why wouldn’t they just be the same confused people they were before they died?
Samantha Hunt
Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people, and finally I did on the open road.We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art.
Lana Del Rey
When you are beloved and express gratitude like the fragrance of a beautiful flower, you are happy.
Debasish Mridha
Khione’s eyes flared pure white. For once, she seemed at a loss for words. She stormed back up the stairs—literally. Halfway up, she turned into a blizzard and disappeared.
Rick Riordan
Surviving is good, but overcoming is better.
Shelley Hendrix
We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation--the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered--is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture.
Marjorie Garber
Working conditions at the computer and long seated sessions can lead to weakness and pronounced posture problems.
Cindy Ann Peterson
What happened?" he asked brusquely, interrupting me. "What do you mean, what happened?""I sensed your fear, heard you call out my
Kristi Cook
He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, blocking my path to the front door like the Berlin Wall. -- Least Wanted
Debbi Mack
Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone.
Mildred D. Taylor
How scary and sudden the shift from Living to Dead.
Marisha Pessl
When its 100 degrees in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When its 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it's still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles.
Neil Simon
Abstract art is uniquely modern. It is a fundamentally romantic response to modern life - rebellious individualistic unconventional sensitive irritable.
Robert Motherwell
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Bible is a guidebook, leading men [and women] to God in a personal faith. Like a map or guidebook, it will show you the way, but you must take it one step at a time.
Billy Graham
Art is a person's private vision expressed in aesthetic forms.
Chaim Potok
It's always to soon to quit!
Norman Vincent Peale
So I would choose to be with you,That's if the choice were mine to make,But you can make decisions too,And you can have this heart to break
Billy Joel
Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?
Charles Bukowski
Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.
Kahlil Gibran
In the end, the greatest victory we can know is the result of all of our hard work, discipline, and dedication: the realization of our dreams.
Cheryl Burke
His gaze was so soft that she would like to wrap herself with it.
Kristen Heitzmann
People don't care how smart woman is as long as she's charming and gay and pretty.
Sandra Brown
Focus on your purpose, and your stress will melt away.
Debasish Mridha
When the world shifts its focus on heart over mind, we will finally experience a beautiful global garden for our children.
Suzy Kassem
it's good to have things done withwhen they don't workit's also good not to hateor even forgetthe person you've failed with.
Charles Bukowski
In God's economy, you may even harvest a crop in places where you didn't plant seed. When you're generous, you will be blessed, whether it comes to you materially, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, or some other way. God obviously cares much more about what happens in our hearts than what happens in our bank accounts, more about our attitudes than our credit scores. Giving generously changes you. It frees you up, undermines the power that money and possessions can have over you, and it makes you more like Him.
Craig Groeschel
Clearly our current form of medicine will bankrupt us and simultaneously keep the chemical industry the number one money-maker as physicians nurture a nation of drugged zombies.
Sherry A. Rogers
Struggle forms character. No struggle, no character.
Lauren Groff
Like investigation, healthy doubt arises from the urge to know what is true--it challenges assumptions or the status quo in service of healing and freedom. In contrast, unhealthy doubt arises from fear or aversion, and it questions one's own basic potential or worth, or the value of another.
Tara Brach
And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God's silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him. And I nibbled on my crust of bread. Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening.
Ellie Wiesel
The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing a thing exactly right.
Edward Simmons
Anger was simple, self-sustaining as a cactus. You couldn't look too closely at it, lest the spines get you in the eye.
Rebecca Scherm
I'm going to make it a law that the correct way to address your sovereign is my giving a high five.' Kai's smiled brightened. 'That's genius. Me too.
Marissa Meyer
The call to “take the land” ...is not a call to a new political, cultural or geographical dominance. It is Kingdom of God territory. It is the will of the Eternal God being done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Ken Baker
And I like a good horror story as much as the next person so long as they kill off some men too and not just girls. But the voices Joan heard were real. There’s clear and substantiated proof they were real. She won battles that would otherwise have been lost because of what those voices told her in advance of them allowing the French generals to strategize in ways completely different than they did before Joan came along. People’s lives were saved because of what those voices told her.
Meg Cabot
The only choice you have right now is the color you want the house painted, and your choices are white and white." She was yelling by the time she finished, her face flushed.
Linda Howard
Great books are great in part because of what they ask of their readers: they are not readily encountered, easily assessed.
Alan Jacobs
Most folk are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
I nodded. I was ready. In fact I was so ready that if he didn’t do something soon, if he didn’t touch me in the next five seconds, it was very possible I might die. Right there on the bed. Still a virgin.
Sarah Alderson
I kept a picture of me kissing my dad’s corpse on the forehead in my wallet for years. I’d break it out any time someone showed me a baby picture, just so they would know how it ends.
Doug Stanhope
Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
Thomas Sowell
Delay and dirt are the realities of the most rewarding travel.
Paul Theroux
I'm the only English thing they can vent their anger on.
Harold Holzer