Quotes by American Authors - Page 1730

Happiness will never flourish in a life bereft of optimism.
Carlos Wallace
Perfection, then, is not a change in the essential character but the completion of a course. This is precisely what Jesus must have meant when he admonished his disciples and us to 'be perfect,' as our Heavenly Father is perfect.
Ravi Zacharias
Perhaps I should just bury myself and become a diamond after thousands of years of intense pressure
Lemony Snicket
Perhaps stars were supposed to be viewed from the ground.
Becky Chambers
The critic is an overgoer with pen-envy.
Geoffrey Hartman
Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.
W.J. Cameron
I’ll be at your side, till the darkness dies.
Laura Thalassa
In the agricultural age, women conceived younger and had many more children because children were economic assets as workers on the farm. In the postindustrial age, children are emotional assets but economic liabilities, costing both a middle-class husband and wife or a single parent over $10,000 a year.
Rachel Lehmann-Haupt
My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.
Anne Fadiman
I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.
Carl Sagan
When you yearn to create positive change, stop focusing on your old stories. If you hope to transform your life from the inside out and become a new improved version of your former self, refocus on what you want rather than what you don’t
Susan C.Young
Surround yourself with people that want more out of life. That won’t settle for average. People that you can connect with on a deeper level. Keep your circle fresh. Keep your circle full of quality rather than quantity. Full of cool ass humans that you can be yourself around. People that fill you up with nothing but love. People that want to see you succeed. People that GET IT. Good circle, good life!
Genereux Philip
The limits are pushed by our resolve to succeed beyond tradition.
Dallas Palmer
When I looked upon the surface of the gently flowing water, each painting that I had burned upon joining the church rose from the waves. I tried to grab them, but they dissolved upon touch.
William Poe
The significance - and ultimately the quality - of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.
Wendell Berry
There's always room for Jell-O
David Byrne
Oh, I just think that a neat house is the sign of a boring person, that's all. And I don't really like to associate with boring people if I can help it.
Katie Kacvinsky
A sacrifice is not about expecting God to break the bond you have with another person. You make the sacrifice on your own because God is more important than the bond.
Shannon L. Alder
Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say.
Elie Wiesel
There is an uncharacteristic radicalism to Lewis’s further suggestion that if we can find “even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale.
Laura Miller
Patience is a virtue and the best things in life are worth waiting for.
Julie Spira
(People) either overestimate Satan's influence and power, living with an inflated, erroneous perspective of his abilities. Or they underestimate him. They don't assign him any credit at all for the difficulties he's stirring up beneath the surface of our lives... Satan is not God. And he is not God's counterpart or peer... Satan is nothing but a copycat trying desperately to convince you he's more powerful than he actually is... So even though he's given temporary clearance to strategize and antagonize, we don't need to pray from a position of fear or weakness against him... But we can't expect to experience this power unless we're serious about joining the battle in prayer.
Priscilla Shirer
Appreciation is the best currency to encourage someone do something for humanity.
Debasish Mridha
But once in a while . . . I don't know. I feel so close, Rose. So close to the edge. Like if I allow myself one small misstep, I'll plunge away and never come back. It's like I'll lose myself.
Richelle Mead
All life is emptiness. Fill it with endless love, bliss, and kindness.
Debasish Mridha
The profound paradox is that the great man became more confident in his approach to others, including the man of his own Cabinet, but he recognized that his major confidence was not himself but in Another.
Elton Trueblood
One of the curious aspects of the Twenty-First Century was the great delusion amongst many people, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, that freedom of speech and freedom of expression were best exercised on technological platforms owned by corporations dedicated to making as much money as possible.
Jarett Kobek
Play is just another version of work
Ray Kurzweil
The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t.v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the same, while they waited.
Charles Bukowski
Youth believes itself immortal. There is a cure for such an attitude, but unfortunately it is a cure from which one never recovers.
Peter David
The gentle art of gastronomy is a friendly one. It hurdles the language barrier, makes friends among civilized people, and warms the heart.
Samuel V. Chamberlain
A person without her or his own truth ain't a person at all, Ida said. Anybody who tells you different—is a jackass, and no longer deserves to be called human being.
Tom Spanbauer
Good boy" can be canceled out the next day by "bad boy." "You're a smart girl" by "What a stupid thing to do!" "Careful" by "Careless" . . . and so on.But you can't take away the time he shoveled the whole walkway even though his arms were tired and his toes were frozen. Or the time he made the baby laugh with his goofy faces when the babysitter couldn't get her to stop crying, or found his mom's reading glasses, or figured out how to make the alarm on the cell phone stop going off when no one else could do it. These are the things he can draw upon to give himself confidence in the face of adversity and discouragement. In the past he did something he was proud of, and he has, within himself, the power to do it again.
Julie Adair King
Women are awesome! I may not agree with the politics behind a lot of contemporary feminism, I like to think that feminism at it’s core is a good thing. Women are not our underlings, they are not subservient, they are not objects created for our pleasure. They are our equals, and should be treated with the same respect and dignity that we expect for ourselves.
Josh Hatcher
The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.
Bell Hooks
I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain
There’s such a thing as being irritatingly ethical,” said Eldric. “That’s you, right now.” That’s a pleasant change. Witches are rarely accused of being irritatingly ethical.“I’ve swigged.” I handed the bottle to Eldric. “Or is it swug?” “Swug,” said Eldric. “It is in bad-boy circles, at least.” He swug. “It tastes much better outside church.” “It’s the picnic principle,” I said. “Things taste better outdoors. And if it’s a forbidden thing, so much the better.
Franny Billingsley
The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary.
Benjamin Franklin
That's because we have it so good", I told her, trying on his deep voice. We impersonated him all the way home, laughing and blowing bubbles, both of us knowing that he was right. We did have it so good.
Emily M. Danforth
What's great about today? I AM experiencing great prosperity and a sudden increase in abundance.
Ron Barrow
And John Kearns whispered into my ear: "Do you see it now? *You* are the nest. *You* are the hatchling. *You* are the chrysalis. *You* are the progeny. *You* are the rot that falls from the stars. All of us--you and I and poor, dear Pellinore. Behold the face of the magnificum, child. And despair."Though I was sickened by the sight, I looked. In the bower of the beast at the top of the world, I beheld the face of the magnificum, and I did not turn away.
Rick Yancey
He didn’t like the idea of leaving unfinished business behind. He had wanted definite answers about the heart attacks to be able to turn the page on who or what caused so many of his brothers to die.
Keith Steinbaum
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
Steve Jobs
It is a great mistake to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection. There is not on earth a more merciless extractor of love from others than a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scrupulously she extracts love, to the uttermost farthing.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Occupation: WriterOccupational Hazard: Carpel tunnelSolution: Wrist guards to bed or my hands do all the sleeping Perspective: I've decided my wrist guards have turned me into a Ninja Superhero that hides in the shadows
Christy Hall
What I got in life that can't be probated I reckon I'll have to take with me. Mostly that is my thankful recollections of all the folks who crossed my trail since I shed my first tears in the year of 1880. Sometimes I had to look hard to find God in them, but most times I found Him. Usually it turned out to be easier to find than I had figured," Sheriff Bud Smith.
James Hickey
It’s important to realize that on the journey to achieving big, you get bigger. Big requires growth, and by the time you arrive, you’re big too! What seemed an insurmountable mountain from a distance is just a small hill when you arrive—at least in proportion to the person you've become. Your thinking, your skills, your relationships, your sense of what is possible and what it takes all grow on the journey to big. As you experience big, you become big.
Gary Keller
While you fear missing a meal you aren't fully aware of the meals you do eat.
Dan Millman
In the moment when he died at my hand he had his own heart's desire—not the actual future, but a hope for the best possible future, one that he could not himself imagine.
Dexter Palmer
There's adventure in the air. . . and cake to be eaten.
Robert Sharenow
Sometimes you sacrifice too much. You find yourself out on a limb and not knowing really quite how to get back down the tree. But it’s the space that you’re in because you have taken the risk. I’m not unaware of the sacrifices and, at times, whom your compassion hurts. It’s not all moving in one direction. It’s complicated, as the work is complicated.
Carrie Mae Weems
Somewhere, things must be beautiful and vivid. Somewhere else, life has to be beautiful and vivid and rich. Not like this muted palette -a pale blue bedroom, washed out sunny sky, dull green yellow brown of the fields. Here, I know ever twist of every road, every blade of grass, every face in this town, and I am suffocating.
Lisa Ann Sandell
Patience is the gift of possibility. Time is merely an illusion. People lack patience, which is why time becomes their enemy.
Lionel Suggs
I want to hold you like a kitten in my shirt, and still I want to spread your thighs and plow ye like a rotting bull. I dinna understand myself.
Diana Gabaldon
What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he is talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?
Dalton Trumbo
Sometimes I replay your dreams in my head to get me by"My heart cracked. "What dreams?""The one where we married and had kids. I used to watch you sleep within your sleep and talk to your belly"In the room in Fairy, I'd gone there to be with Luke knowing it wasn't real. I'd dreamed we had a normal life with kids. "What did you say?""I would tell our child how much I loved you both
Shannon Dermott
Childhood is such a delicate tissue; what they had done this morning could snag somewhere in the little ones, make a dull, small pain that will circle back again and again, and hurt them in small ways for the rest of their lives.
Lauren Groff
A neat little apartment with a neat little bourgeois life. A neat little security on the edge of the abyss. Do you really see that?
Erich Maria Remarque
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
Erich Fromm
If you really want to be a rebel get a job, cut your grass, read your bible, and shut up. Because no one is doing that.
Mark Driscoll