Quotes by American Authors - Page 1856

Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn't die; she'd have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. "I've got to get to the bottom of this one," she'd say, as if a book were no different from a pond or a lake. I thought she'd go on reading forever but it didn't work out that way.
Alice Hoffman
She was a blameless sinless woman, yet she understood who how it was with people who sinned. Inflexibly rigid in her own moral conduct, she condoned weaknesses in others. She revered God and loved Jesus, but she understood why people often turned away from these Two.
Betty Smith
They tell you the story of Job so often to remind you when you lose it all, stay calm. I've always refused it. I hated the story. It made no sense, and then I developed the belief that religion’s only purpose is to keep the poor from murdering the rich. And then I found the most dangerous folks are those who have nothing to lose, and I put it all together.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Every part of life changes with every breath we take. If you don’t like where your story is headin’, you fight your fate with everything you have.
Jessica Fortunato
Free love, man, Free Love! Which, by the way, was the single greatest concept a young man has ever heard. About three years late, women got wise an my frustration returned to normal levels.
Steve Martin
The living world has become impoverished. Species are being lost every day. Energy and other resources are nearing exhaustion. The environment is deteriorating. Pollution is everywhere. Climate is changing. Natural balances are threatened.
Christian de Duve
Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By most astounding stroke of luck and infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.For endless eons there was no you. Before you know it, you will cease to be again. And in between you have this wonderful opportunity to see and feel and think and do. Whatever else you do with your life, nothing will remotely compare with the incredible accomplishment of having managed to get yourself born. Congratulations. Well done. You really are special.
Bill Bryson
St. Catherine of Siena once said, ‘If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze.’ But,” I turned to him urgently, “how can I even light a single candle if someone blocks off the first step?
Gina Marinello-Sweeney
Just as it is hard for us, in our garden, to stop weeding, because there is always another weed there in front of us, it may be hard for her to stop grazing, because there are always a few more shoots of fresh grass just ahead of her.
Lydia Davis
I'll show you secrets if you stay...you'll never know if you run away...
Richie Tankersley Cusick
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune...” ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Lisa M. Collins
Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.
Tallulah Bankhead
People are always complaining that life's not fair, but that simply isn't true. Life is extraordinarily fair. It's just not centered on you.
Lynn Marie Sager
There is no other force, no other determining factor, no external cause to the cohesive unfolding of your life’s episodes – only your composite inner nature. Change that and you change your life.
Thomas Daniel Nehrer
Someday I'll understand more of these things. At the moment I just have to think them through. Not everything you want to know is explained properly on Google.
Meg Rosoff
Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.
Thomas Szasz
His goal (Bezos's)was not just to make browsing for books easy, but an enjoyable experience. “People don’t just buy books because they need books,” he has said. “There are products like that. Pharmaceuticals are that way. Nobody enjoys browsing the Preparation H counter. But people will gladly spend hours in a bookstore, so you have to make the shopping experience fun and engaging.
Richard L. Brandt
A truly American sentiment recognises the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.
Grover Cleveland
My soul is not satisfied with an inert universe. The gods may not make a habit of speaking to me personally, but I can't help but whisper comments to them.
Thomm Quackenbush
I realized that I'm a child."William looked point-blank at her chest. "No.
Ilona Andrews
A little conflict can create a lot of creativity.
Richie Norton
If you want to encourage your spiritual leaders (and their wives!) let them know you are praying for them. Ask them periodically for any specific prayer requests and assure them you will pray accordingly. Use the following prayer guide with accompanying scriptures, to suggest practical ways to pray for those who provide spiritual leadership for the flock.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss
In the old days, a liberal and a conservative (a “dove” and a “hawk,” say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper, and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional.
George Saunders
Facts may be colored by the personalities of the people who present them.
Reginald Rose
We must love those close to us, all the time, every day. Moments only happen once. Make them matter.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
Society has become so obsessed with sex that it seeps from all the pores of our national life.
Billy Graham
Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to "season" people.
Vera Nazarian
Trust your gut, and don't let fear get the best of you.
Anna Jarzab
Grief makes gravity heavier and air molecules denser, so breathing is accomplished in a shallow, half-hearted way.
Dee-Williams
Someone had given my daughter a doctor's kit. Carefully, she takes her own temperature, places the pressure cuff around her arm. Then she takes the cuff off and examines it. "Would you like to be a doctor when you grow up?" I ask her. She looks at me oddly. "I'm already a doctor," she says.
Jenny Offill
One thing I've learned: you never know where life is taking you, but it's taking you.
Hilary Swank
Our daily conversation when we meet each other, whether it be in the office or on the campus or in the shop, should be concerned with the things of God.
Billy Graham
Very well. He'd lighten up. As a matter of fact, he felt as light as the bubbly froth that flew from the lips of the waves. Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil.
Tom Robbins
That which isn’t love, isn’t god.
John K. Brown
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
Thoughts are magnetic. What we think about we attract.
Jon Gordon
The paradoxical situation with a vast number of people today is that they are half asleep when awake, and half awake when asleep, or when they want to sleep.
Erich Fromm
In the queer mess of human destiny the determining factor is luck.
William E. Woodward
Followers of Christ are not called to be merely tolerant of others. We are called to love those who disagree with us. Abnormal communication - blessing those who curse us - establishes the relational level of our communication and demonstrates our concern for others.
Tim Muehlhoff
Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
Nicholas Murray Butler
If I said I was madly in love with you you'd know I was lying.
Margaret Mitchell
It must be remembered that in those great days I was considered to be an "integrationist" - this was never, quite, my own idea of myself - and Malcolm was considered to be a "racist in reverse." This formulation, in terms of power - and power is the arena in which racism is acted out - means absolutely nothing: it may even be described as a cowardly formulation. The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both.
James Baldwin
Her fine high forehead sloped gently up to where her hair, bordering it like an armorial shield, burst into lovelocks and waves and curlicues of ash blonde and gold. Her eyes were bright, big, clear, wet and shining, the colour of her cheeks was real, breaking close to the surface from the strong young pump of her heart. Her body hovered delicately on the last edge of childhood -- she was almost eighteen, nearly complete, but the dew was still on her.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.
Robin Hobb
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.
Ray Bradbury
one wonders how much real conversation there is when one party does not, in many districts, have to contend for the votes of minorities, and the other can only elevate minorities into positions of power when the political wind is blowing in its direction.
Garrance Franke-Ruta
Every time you give your word, you’re putting your honor on the line.
Frank Sonnenberg
The more a person knows the less they talk. I shall cease speaking and endeavor to instill a large band of silence inside myself in order to forge a deeper and closer relationship with all of nature. Only when I attain absolute quietude shall I understand the supreme virtue of humanity and understand the meaning of both life and death. Only when I achieve absolute stillness shall I come to a perfect realization of the meaning of existence innate in all things.
Kilroy J. Oldster
The right thing to do is so easy to see when you're seventeen years old and don't have to make any big decisions. When you know that no matter what you do, someone will take care of you and fix everything. But when you're grown up, the world is not that black and white, and the right thing doesn't a tidy little arrow pointing to it.
Huntley Fitzpatrick
Part of discovering the adventure God has designed you for is learning how to frame it or reframe it.
Mark Batterson
She hadn't loved Randolph Carter. He had been a man like many, so wrapped and rapt in his own story that there was no room for the world around him except as it served his own tale: the black men of Parg and Kled and Sona Nyl, the gold men of Thorabon and Ophir and Rinar; and all the women invisible everywhere, except when they brought him drinks or sold him food - all walk-on parts in the play that was Randolph Carter, or even wallpaper.
Kij Johnson
Men are by nature wanderers...Every people has moved from somewhere, and had to learn the ways of the land from the people who were there before.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Oh, Jatel, I am so used. Would you rid yourself of me?" the knight started to cry.Jatel slowly kissed the woman upon her forehead. To the Gods! how he loved her so.Not for the world entire, sire.
Donald Allen Kirch
God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
To think that she had read the same elegiac prose he now beheld with such quiet awe made his heart sing.
David S.E. Zapanta
With too much pride a man cannot learn a thing. In and of itself, learning teaches you how foolish you are.
Criss Jami
Pain is part of being alive and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever nor is it necessarily unbearable and we need to be taught that.
Rabbi Harold Kushner
The grown-ups, or maybe I should say the parents, ate in the dining room.
Ann Darby
You just have too little faith, Estella...in yourself and in God. Don't assume that because He didn't give you one thing you wanted, He isn't ready to give you something else you might want more. He knows our desires better than we do, after all.
Dawn Crandall