Quotes by American Authors - Page 190

One of the powerful functions of a library — any library — lies in its ability to take us away from worlds that are familiar and comfortable and into ones which we can neither predict nor control, to lead us down new roads whose contours and vistas provide us with new perspectives. Sometimes, if we are fortunate, those other worlds turn out to have more points of familiarity with our own than we had thought. Sometimes we make connections back to familiar territory and when we have returned, we do so supplied with new perspectives, which enrich our lives as scholars and enhance our role as teachers. Sometimes the experience takes us beyond our immediate lives as scholars and teachers, and the library produces this result particularly when it functions as the storehouse of memory, a treasury whose texts connect us through time to all huma
Richard F. Thomas
I believe it's our loss of connection with our instinctual side that prevents us from being effective pack leaders for our dogs. Perhaps it's also why we also seem to be failing at being positive guardians of our planet.
Cesar Millan
We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.
Walter Cronkite
LoreleiIt is no night to drown in:A full moon, river lapsingBlack beneath bland mirror-sheen,The blue water-mists droppingScrim after scrim like fishnetsThough fishermen are sleeping,The massive castle turretsDoubling themselves in a glassAll stillness. Yet these shapes floatUp toward me, troubling the faceOf quiet. From the nadirThey rise, their limbs ponderousWith richness, hair heavierThan sculptured marble. They singOf a world more full and clearThan can be. Sisters, your songBears a burden too weightyFor the whorled ear's listeningHere, in a well-steered country,Under a balanced ruler.Deranging by harmonyBeyond the mundane order,Your voices lay siege. You lodgeOn the pitched reefs of nightmare,Promising sure harborage;By day, descant from bordersOf hebetude, from the ledgeAlso of high windows. WorseEven than your maddeningSong, your silence. At the sourceOf your ice-hearted calling-Drunkenness of the great depths.O river, I see driftingDeep in your flux of silverThose great goddesses of peace.Stone, stone, ferry me down there.
Sylvia Plath
My mama steps out of her dressand drops it, an inheritance falling to my feet.She stands alone: bathed, blooming,burdened with nothing of this world.Her body is naked and beautiful,her wings gray and scorched,her brown eyes piercing the brown of mine.I watch her departure, her flapping wings:She doesn’t look back, not even once,not even to whisper my name
Brenda Sutton Rose
Tyrants are willing to commit to anything…including mass murder to maintain their domination over every human being alive. They abuse the lives of the people they are entrusted with by the perverse dictates that they, themselves, would never live by. And they feel justified in this by their own self-righteous elite morality, which sets them high above everyone else in their own minds.You and I, however, are made of quite different stuff. Our words are filled with our true beliefs and backed by the honesty of our actions. We take great pride in not only who we are…but overcoming the struggle it took to make us this way. We are men and women of character…principles…and courage!
R.G. Risch
He of all people knew how negative thinking could sabotage things.
Tracy March
How's happiness class going, by the way?""Okay, so far.""Are you feeling happy?" he asks with the hint of a smirk.I shrug. "The professor says that happiness is wanting what you have."Christian makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. "I see. Happiness is wanting what you have. Well, there you go. So what's the problem, then?""What do you mean?""Why is the class only okay?""Oh." I bit my lip, then confess. "Every time I meditate, I start glowing.
Cynthia Hand
There was that word again.Mature. Was this what maturity was? Giving up on the things we wanted because we knew we’d never get them?
Diana Peterfreund
Believe me, daughter, there is nothing worse than having your own family member out for revenge.
Amy Tan
Most of the people you read about being turned meet vamps in clubs or over the Internet...Ew, did you...?""Yes, I met a vampire on the Internet, went to his evil love den, and let him turn me, because I'm that brainless.
Molly Harper
The underlying issue in getting women to top positions is what kind of leadership we value and how we teach, assess, and promote “good” leaders in all organizations.
Maureen Chiquet
Good-humor makes all things tolerable.
Henry Ward Beecher
From my window I watched the full moon—a moon that reminded me of Brett—become shadowed, little by little until there was only a deep blackness in the woods at night. I would sit there wakeful, hour after hour, and wonder if this aching around my heart, this sense of being alone, forlorn and unwanted in a world where there was gayety and love for others of my age, was going to continue for all of my days.
Irene Hunt
Around the lunch table everyone seems to have given something up---dairy, meat, gluten, sugar, carbs. Only in a land of plenty could people voluntarily go without so much.
J.C. Carleson
Life is not a matter of dollars and cents, houses and lands, earning capacity and financial achievement. Greed must not be allowed to make man the slave of wealth.
Billy Graham
Do you have to do murder?Do we have to do murder? Sure we have to do murder. There are only two subjects--a woman's chastity, and murder. Nobody's interested in chastity any more. Murder's all we got to write stories about.
Leslie Ford
Our “protective bubbles”—our houses, our cars, our friends, our online identities—might make us feel secure, but most of it’s just an illusion. It’s easy to get hurt, just like it’s easy to hurt other people.
Paula Stokes
The genealogy of blessing always traces back to God-ordained risk.
Mark Batterson
If Heaven actually exists, I don't need anyone to be my real estate broker. After all, what is religion but an attempt to sell you a share in the ultimate gated community?
Quentin R. Bufogle
But more importantly in my book of life, it's what you can't buy with money that is often more important than what you can buy.
Carew Papritz
Usually, meaning tends to find you, in the middle of the night, and when you least expect it.
Catherine Lowell
The funny thing about destiny is that you can't predict it, and you can't prevent it.- Leslie
Kathy Love
You can't "let go". You can't "detach with love". You can't let them "hit bottom". You can't seem to implement the strategies you have learned when you are faced with your adult child's chaos and anxiety. When you try to do this, it makes you physically and emotionally ill, and the anxiety and fear becomes unbearable.
Mary Crocker Cook
Read a lot. But read as a writer, to see how other writers are doing it. And make your knowledge of literature in English as deep and broad as you can. In workshops, writers are often told to read what is being written now, but if that is all you read, you are limiting yourself. You need to get a good overall sense of English literary history, so you can write out of that knowledge.
Theodora Goss
I'd like to start a family but you have to have a date first.
Larry David
I suppose when you say you slept with him, it was more than just a nap?"Lillian shot her a withering glance. "Daisy, don’t be a pea wit.
Lisa Kleypas
This feeling of guilt is your conscience calling your attention to the higher road, and your heart wishing you had taken it.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Something rose in Oscar's chest, like a flower blossoming all at once. It grew until it filled him and threatened to spill over everywhere. The words [he] spoke touched a longing so deep Oscar hadn't even known it was there.
Anne Ursu
She looked at him for a long moment. "There really is more substance to you than you let on, isn't there?£
Jen Turano
He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done and he did it.
Edgar A. Guest
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
Dean Martin
Doctors are great--as long as you don't need them.
Edward E. Rosenbaum
Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do you know how,sometimes, when you first wake up,your pulse is so thorough, so slow,that you, and the one who is with you, and the room, and the opening light all seem to swelland subside and swell inside your heart?
Jennifer Clarvoe
Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.
George R.R. Martin
Be humble: have the courage to speak the truth.
Ken Poirot
[O]ur revolt was as much against the traditional black leadership structure as it was against segregation and discrimination.
John Lewis
Because I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I should be doing. That is peace." Pax, Pennypacker.
Sara Pennypacker
What saddens me most is that some poor woman out there has to be Garth's wife. And his three children -- oh, his poor three children. What a despicable human being this guy is.
Benjamin Harrison
Can violence and the use of force to effect change upon the universe be left to the young? Do they see what was, what is, and what might yet be? Have they suffered, watched evil fall upon the good, or good upon the evil?Or should the burden of violence be left to those who can bear it most lightly—upon those who have closed their minds or their feelings? How can they understand the suffering that they must inflict?Should the burden of force be laid upon the short-lived, who will not see the consequences of their actions? How can they dispense force with compassion if they can escape the knowledge of what they do?...The greater the force brought to bear, the older and wiser must be the entity who wields it. Wisdom allows sorrow. Age allows experience, and knowledge reinforces wisdom and experience....Those who would bear the burden of force must be those who are strong and do not seek it, for those who seek force would misuse it, and those who are weak would shy from what they must
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
The room was plainly but adequately furnished; she noted the shower stall in the bathroom beyond. Actually, she would have preferred a tub, but this would do.
Robert Bloch
I'm dead?""That body is... yes.
Donna Augustine
Is this different? Does love make lovemaking better? Does Nick feel this holy consummation, this wonder and beauty, this eternity, the way I do? Or is sex simply like this, designed by Nature to fool us all into multiplying?
Beatriz Williams
A lot of film people are like that– especially the ones below the line, the blue-collar guys, the grunts. They like putting their hands on the equipment and getting it to do things for them. It's not about art or ideas. It's about working at something and making it come out right.
Paul Auster
Try as hard as we may for perfection the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways.
Samuel McChord Crothers
That’s how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side a closed door that he’s lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.
Walter Mosley
He broke my heart, and now it's raining, just to rub it in...
Alicia Keys
I was begging you not to get married and if you do manage to talk some poor woman into marrying you, please pull out,” Paul said in a slow, condescending manner, raising his eyebrows in hopes of clarifying. “Sterilization should be a legal requirement for pricks like you.
Kele Moon
A weed is but an unloved flower.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
How is it that some celebrities, whom the average person would believe to have all the popularity a human being could want, still admit to feeling lonely? It is quite naive to assume that popularity is the remedy for loneliness. Loneliness does not necessarily equal physical solitude, it is the inability to be oneself and rightfully represented as oneself.
Criss Jami
Excite the soul and the weather and the town and your condition in the world all disappear the world itself loses its solidity nothing remains but the soul and the Divine Presence in which it lives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Variety in your diet is health in your life.
Toni Sorenson
Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.
Jennifer Elisabeth
Fellow-feeling. . .is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Neither our national nor our local civic life can be what it should be unless it is marked by the fellow-feeling, the mutual kindness, the mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests, which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate together for a common object. A very large share of the rancor of political and social strife arises either from sheer misunderstanding by one section, or by one class, of another, or else from the fact that the two sections, or two classes, are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other’s passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view, while they are both entirely ignorant of their community of feeling as regards the essentials of manhood and humanity.
Theodore Roosevelt
My grandmother, a dim, stern figure, named her children Lily and Violet, which I guess from seeing a picture of my mother's paved, ugly backyard, was the nearest she came to a garden.
Emma Joy Crone
Acceptance of death and cancer did not mean I intended to give up, just the opposite. I was prepared to fight cancer not out of fear of dying, but out of joy of living.
Edie Littlefield Sundby
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Kahlil Gibran
You’re an assignment, not an assignation. Soon as I get your pretty boy ass through the Wilderness and deliver you to the Outpost, you’re no more than a stain to spit-shine off my boots.
Rie Warren
If it's dive-bombing you from the air, bury yourself in the sand. It might lose sight of you. Also, no one likes to eat food covered in sand. No one.
Andrew Shaffer