Quotes by American Authors - Page 1759

The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.
James Jones
All human aspirations are opportunities for brands to build relationships.
Laura Busche
It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost.
Thomas Paine
Time does not give one much leeway: it thrusts us forward from behind, blows us through the narrow tunnel of the present into the future. But space is broad, teeming with possibilities, positions, intersections, passages, detours, U-turns, dead-ends, one-way streets. Too many possibilities, indeed.
Susan Sontag
Some of my earliest and fondest memories of my mother are of her kneeling at the side of per bed every night and praying. As a child, I would always get very close to her as she prayed. I would put my ear as close as I could to her mouth and try my best to hear what she was saying to God, but I never could make out the words. Today, being married to an addict myself, I'm pretty sure I know exactly what she was praying.
Barbara Bice
It's a fact that people are afraid of what they don't understand. And most are too lazy or ignorant to find out more.
Richelle Mead
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
Abigail Adams
How can something as necessary as breathing be immoral?
Susan Scott
I was just thoughts, just air. There was nothingness all around me. Was this what it was like to be dead? When you died, did you still sense everything going on around you, only it was happening so far away that you didn't care about it? You were floating through space and time, and nothing that happened to you mattered because nothing really could happen to you because you didn't exist?
Melissa Kantor
I believe that love--not imitation--is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated your lover knows you can't.
Marilyn Vos Savant
Our thoughts shape us. We become our obsessions. Our thoughts can enslave us or save us.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Crooks stood up from his bunk and faced her. "I had enough," he said coldly. "You got no rights comin' in a colored man's room. You got no rights messing around in here at all. Now you jus' get out, an' get out quick. If you don't, I'm gonna ast the boss not to ever let you come in the barn no more."She turned on him in scorn. "Listen, Nigger," she said. "You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?"Crooks stared helplessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself.She closed on him. "You know what I could do?"Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. "Yes, ma'am.""Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny."Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego--nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, "Yes, ma'am," and his voice was toneless.For a moment she stood over him as though waiting for him to move so that she could whip at him again; but Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in. She turned at last to the other two.
John Steinbeck
All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
Erma Bombeck
Friends are sometimes the only thing that keep us from plunging into the abyss. But you have to reach for them, and they have to be there on the other side of the cliff reaching out to you too.
Wendy Mills
The simple truth is that life goes on whether we're ready or not.The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we find a way to embrace it, or do wesit back and allow it to pass us by?
Lorri Faye
...quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.
Brian Greene
If we're going to be smart, we can't be stupid…!
James A. Murphy
Like a gardener I believe that what goes down must come up.
Lynwood L. Giacomini
If a train is coming at you, closing your eyes won't save you ... but if you look right at it, you at least have a chance to jump.
Andrew Vachss
All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.
Ken Kesey
[T]here is nothing to say about life. It has no meaning. You make meaning. If you want a meaning in your life, find a meaning and bring it into your life, but life won't give you a meaning. Meaning is a concept. It is a notion of an end toward which you are going. The point of Buddhism is This Is It.
Joseph Campbell
During intellectual droughts one shower of good ideas can cause a flash-flood to wash away the roads your habits travel.
Bryant McGill
What is missing in our time is not the willingness of God toact in biblical ways, but the willingness of his people to believehe is still the God of the Bible—and to act on that faith. To throwaway fear, to stride against common wisdom, to risk all that wehave and all that we are so we may follow only our simple beliefthat the God of the Scriptures is still alive and that he will stilldo what he says in his Word.
Wes Moore
Detachment is being apathetic or aloof to other people, while un-attachment is acknowledging and honoring other people, while choosing not to let them influence your emotional well being. Detached would mean I do not care, while un-attached means I care, although I am not going to alter my emotional state due to your emotions, words, or actions.
Alaric Hutchinson
funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story
Sarah Dessen
At this very moment, you may be saying to yourself that you have any number of admirable qualities. You are a loyal friend, a caring person, someone who is smart, dependable, fun to be around. That’s wonderful, and I’m happy for you, but let me ask you this: are you being any of those things to yourself?
Phillip McGraw
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it shor
Henry David Thoreau
Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society.
Criss Jami
She had only two modes of operation: complete control or complete insanity.
Ilona Andrews
Early on I realized that I had to hire people smarter and ore qualified than I was in a number of different fields, and I had to let go of a lot of decision-making. I can't tell you how hard that is. But if you've imprinted your values on the people around you, you can dare to trust them to make the right moves.
Howard Schultz
we're thieves, we're rats. We know when to fight and when to run.
Victoria Aveyard
You float like a feather," sings Radiohead, "In a beautiful world." I've listened several times to the Radiohead songs, because it was nice of Raymond to say he heard a bit of them in what I sang. I'm not sure I hear it myself, but I am pleased and touched. Sometimes that's what you need, just a quick casual word of knowledgeable encouragement. Radiohead reminds me a little of the songs in Garden State soundtrack. Now, that's a soundtrack. They were all songs that Zach Braff liked, so he put them in his movie. And there's that beautiful moment near the beginning where Natalie Portman hands him the headphones and she watches him listen to the song and she smiles her huge, innocent Natalie Portman smile.
Nicholson Baker
He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.
Mark Twain
There's plenty more fish in the sea than Prince Jonathan," he told her softly. "And this particular fish loves you with all his crooked heart."-George to Alanna
Tamora Pierce
What goodness she might hold in her heart had been overshadowed by her actions, again and again, She wasn’t a bad person, but she might was well be.
Sonja Yoerg
Christ's father let him die on that cross. I understand why he done it. But Christ never had no granny like me.
Taylor Brown
A miserable scrooge whom lacks charity for the entire world is a menace to society. Spiritual sullenness destroys men quicker than gunfire.
Kilroy J. Oldster
People HAVE used me. But it don't matter I don't let it change me. – Mohammed Ali
Davis Miller
1. Santa Claus is real. However, your parents are folkloric constructs meant to protect and foritfy children against the darknesses of the real world. They are symbols representing the return of the sun and the end of winter, the sacrifice of the king and the eternal fecundity of the queen. They wear traditional vestments and are associated with certain seasonal plants, animals, and foods. After a certain age, no intelligent child continues believing in their parents, and it is embarrassing when one professes such faith after puberty. Santa Claus, however, will never fail us.
Catherynne M. Valente
If there weren’t so many interesting conversations taking place inside my head, I might venture to speak out loud.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I long to drift through turquoise skies;race the wind in rampant flight.Ruddy chains have framed my eyes,they seize my heart and stain the light.
Craig Froman
Love, Hope, and Reverence are realities of a different order from the senses, but they are positive and constant facts, always active, always working out mighty changes in human life.
Elizabeth Blackwell
Prayer lets God do what he does best. Take a pebble & kill a Goliath. Take the common, make it spectacular! Pray & see what He can do.
Max Lucado
And yet does the appetite for new days ever really cease?
John Updike
Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you only take what is worth having.
George S. Clason
What would your prayers look like if you believed that the cross really was the measure of God's compassion for someone?
J.D. Greear
At some point, you just pull off the band aid and it hurts. But when it is over, you are relieved.
John Green
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
Alex Haley
Humor is a universal lanuage.
Joel Goodman
Jealous of the crazy gay kid. That doesn't sound right.""Hey, Sol," she said, her tone getting serious for a second. "Those are two things about you out of a million. Don't box yourself in.
John Corey Whaley
The world is evil only when you become its slave.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
I want excitement; and I don’t care what form it takes or what I pay for it, so long as it makes my heart beat.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
You cannot save everyone. Some people are going to destroy themselves no matter how much you try to help them.
Bryant McGill
Successful people have libraries. The rest have big screen TVs
Jim Rohn
Courage, Love, Illusion (or dream, if you will) -- he who possesses all three, or two, or at least one of these things wins whatever there is to win; those who lack all three are the failures.
Edward Lewis Wallant
It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object.
Theodore Roosevelt
They do not call him the terror of husbands and lovers for no reason...
Andrea Zuvich
Speak of evil, and you summon it.
Rae Carson
In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents. And many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been by accident.
Tina Fey