Quotes by American Authors - Page 1921

Proud houses fall into decline and great cities pass into ruin. The stories of those things are lost to forgotten languages and moth-eaten scrolls. Vine and root grapple with the rune carved in stone, and rust carries away, fleck by fleck, the great gates of iron.
William Timothy Murray
Do not forget about the butterflies.
Evan Meekins
A goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don't sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, its a system. If you're waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it's a goal. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure. All I'm suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they apply their system. That's a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.
Scott Adams
I am not the first to suggest that anthropology arose in Western thought in an inauspicious period, one characterized by colonialism and so-called racial science. But I seem to be more or less alone in my conviction that, in all its primitivity, this anthropology continues to color the ways in which we conceive of human nature.
Marilynne Robinson
It's like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, ‘what the hell did I want to jump over this stupid bar for?
Stephen King
It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear.
E. H. Harriman
Every year I collect a select amount of material possessions (baseball cards, coins, famous paraphernalia) to pass on to my children. In two or more generations they should have a small fortune of 'ancient' famous items.
Akutra-Ramses Atenosis Cea
Spend some personal time with Jesus and he will reveal himself to you on a deeper level.
Sandra M. Michelle
Monsters are most dangerous when they're afraid
Victoria Aveyard
Fife... simply walked off by himself, into the jungle to look at all the things which would continue to exist after he had ceased to. There were a lot of them. Fife looked at them all. They remained singularly unchanged by his scrutiny.
James Jones
I suppose there are people who can pass up free guacamole, but they're either allergic to avocado or too joyless to live.
Frank Bruni
I guess I should thank you for totally making my morning. It’s not every day a stranger notices my perspiration level.- Dr. Jeri Asher (BLACK MARIAH - A Calling)
Richard Finney
Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.
Terence McKenna
Proformas rarely perform; missed projections are more often the norm. Still, we skew them up high, we miss but we try, for proformas which rarely perform.
Ryan Lilly
Whoa," said Nico as he climbed off the bus. "Is that a climbing wall?""Yeah," I (Percy) said."Why is there lava pouring down it?""Little extra challenge..." - Percy
Rick Riordan
No matter what your circumstance, if you provide kids with creative ammunition, they will blast holes into an oppressive reality, and conceive limitless worlds.
A.J. Mendez Brooks
Thoughts are like burning stars, and ideas, they flood, they stretch the universe.
Criss Jami
Never question the clouds, they're only bringing the life-giving rain.
Amber Schamel
They are so caught up in their happiness that they don't realize I'm not really a part of it. I am wandering along the periphery. I am like the people in the Winslow Homer paintings, sharing the same room with them but not really there. I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that's not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood. . . . There are moments I just sit in my frame, float in my tank, ride in my car and say nothing, think nothing that connects me to anything at all.
David Levithan
As long as something was a mystery, there was still the potential for amazement. Maybe that's where I went wrong before. Some riddles weren't meant to be solved.
Chelsea Sedoti
All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.
Michael Crichton
He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me.Then he was gone.Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted torun after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you.Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us.I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much grief.
Jenny Han
Be as fierce as a lion. Let the world hear you roar.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
You know the kind of smile I’m talkin’ about. That flirty, cute, bite-your-bottom lip ‘cause his smile is so stinkin’ perfect—that kind of smile.
Lynn Mitchell
And I envied her that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don't suppose I had any idea what I 'wanted' and so I was chosen, not choosing. There's glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will.
Elizabeth Wein
Cope? Adapt? Uh, no. These are military kids. They roll with it. I once asked a new student, 'See any familiar faces?' She pointed out various kids and replied, 'Seattle, Tampa, Okinawa, New Jersey.' For military dependents school is literally a non-stop revolving door of old and new friends.
Tucker Elliot
Taking power away from a man is a dangerous thing. Someone always pays.
Glenn Close
The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted -in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations, defy them. If you were an indecisive person, you could become a leader and wear lederhosen. If you were a housewife, you could become a glamour girl with rhinestone sunglasses. Are you slow witted? No worries -you can be an intellectual genius. If you're old, you can be young. Anything was possible. It was almost like a war against the self.
Bob Dylan
The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.
Carl Sagan
A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.
Mark Twain
Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Courage is leaning into the doubts and fears to do what you know is right even when it doesn’t feel natural or safe.
Lee Ellis
My friends, don't idolize hardship. What you idolize is what your heart will look for and what your heart looks for is what you will have. And don't capitalize on misfortune, because you will always seek out to have capital! Throw away that pride! Don't put sorrow on a pedestal! If you ask me if I would rather have had my sorrows or not, I will tell you that no, I would rather have not had any of them! In the blink of an eye, I would rid myself of them! I have no pride. I don't rely on hardships and sorrows to mold me into someone. I don't allow myself to be dictated. When hardship and sorrow come knocking, saying "We are responsible for who you are today, let us in!" I'm going to say, in a split second, "No you're not! Go away, I don't owe you anything!
C. JoyBell C.
If we're not supposed to eat animals, how come they're made out of meat?
Tom Snyder
Like a good marriage, trust on a team is never complete; it must be maintained over time
Patrick Lencioni
It is difficult to want to tell a grave that it is not immortal. It's so obvious at that point.
Aimee Bender
None of us ate together: my Aunt Gladys ate at five o’clock, my cousin Susan at five-thirty, me at six, and my uncle at six-thirty. There is nothing to explain this beyond the fact that my aunt is crazy.
Philip Roth
I don't date as an active activity anymore because the work of loving myself is enough.
Gita Jackson
For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes met the staring eyes in the mirror, they slipped away as they must have slipped away, Guy thought, that first afternoon on the train, when he had tried to avoid Bruno’s eyes.
Patricia Highsmith
No one ever drowned in sweat.
U.S. Marine Corps
Fiction is only fiction because it is yet to be proven.
Robert M. Roberts
My gratitude for good writing is unbounded I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.
Anne Lamott
What--has O-Tar seen an ulsio and fainted?" demanded I-Gos with broad sarcasm."Men have died for less than that, ancient one," E-Thas reminded him."I am safe," retorted I-Gos, "for I am not a brave and popular son of the jeddak of Manator.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
I can't help it. You bring it out in me," he accused. "No," I said. "You're choosing to let me get to you. Don't. It's all in the mind.
Donna Lynn Hope
Like the morning sun, add sparkle, beauty, and warmth to the lives of others.
Debasish Mridha
I'm not ok - you're not ok and that's ok.
Rev. William Sloane Coffin
When you trust, you are tender and delicate, but when you doubt, you are dangerous and destructive
Anaïs Nin
You push the TRUTH off a cliff, but it will always fly. You can submerge the TRUTH under water, but it will not drown. You can place the TRUTH in the fire, but it will survive. You can bury the TRUTH beneath the ground, but it will arise. TRUTH always prevails!
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
You come from your mauma, you sleep in the bed with her till you're near twenty years grown, and you still don't know what haunches in the dark corners of her.
Sue Monk Kidd
Hello, Kanta. They're saying interesting things about you on the news," she said. "I wondered if you'd survived.""He didn't," I said. "I killed him."Silence."I killed Mkhai, too," I said. "Tens of thousands of years, gone in the blink of an eye.""Why are you telling me this?" asked the voice."Because you're next," I said. "I'm the demon slayer. Come and get me.
Dan Wells
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.
Joan Didion
Hearts know nothing of time-not age or length of acquaintance. They know only what they need.
Jayne Rylon
You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture.You've got to become them."(Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)
David McCullough
Look, I went to a lot of trouble to come here and try to help you. I’m in more trouble than I can guess, but if you don’t want my help… maybe I should have just stayed home.
D.L. Given
Damn, her mouth was a weapon.
Kelly Moran
Organizing a coup was not the same as wanting one.
David Pietrusza
People, most especially those who have known ease in this life, care more about being prospered than refined. It's always about what they can get from God, not what they can do for others, unless they can call attention to it for others to see.
Donna Lynn Hope
Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
If you didn't earn something, it's not worth flaunting.
Aaron Lauritsen
Foretold by ancient seers and now by scientists, we are at the unprecedented historic and evolutionary crossroad. We have the capacity to transform ourselves spiritually and our civilisation materially or de-evolve into an Orwellian nightmare
Jonathan R Banks