Quotes by American Authors - Page 2235

if the count of monte cristo could escape the chateau d'if, william smithback could escape from river oaks
Douglas Preston
I feel like a child who has found a wonderful trail in the woods. Countless others have gone before and blazed the trail, but to the child it's as new and fresh as if it had never been walked before. The child is invariably anxious for others to join in the great adventure. It's something that can only be understood by actual experience. Those who've begun the journey, and certainly those who've gone further than I, will readily understand what I am saying.
Randy Alcorn
He had been haunted his whole life by a mildcase of claustrophobia—the vestige of a childhood incident he had never quite overcome.Langdon’s aversion to closed spaces was by no means debilitating, but it had always frustrated him.It manifested itself in subtle ways. He avoided enclosed sports like racquetball or squash, and he hadgladly paid a small fortune for his airy, high-ceilinged Victorian home even though economical facultyhousing was readily available. Langdon had often suspected his attraction to the art world as a youngboy sprang from his love of museums’ wide open spaces.
Dan Brown
Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.
Vladimir Nabokov
I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.
Isaac Marion
Smile like the sun and radiate your light and make this world bright.
Debasish Mridha
If you're calling for peace, I am not home.
Darnell Lamont Walker
All the world knew that a maester forged his silver link when he learned the art of healing—but the world preferred to forget that men who knew how to heal also knew how to kill.
George R.R. Martin
At first I thought it was simply that the specter of the crazy bag lady has been branded so simply into the collective female consciousness that we’re stuck with her. Now I realized I was wrong. What is haunting about the bag lady is not only that she is left to wander the streets, cold and hungry, but that she’s living proof of what it means to not be loved. Her apparition will endure as long as women consider the love of a man the most supreme of all social validations.
Kate Bolick
Sing your song as you like to do,don't worry about who is listening to you.
Debasish Mridha
Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.
Neil Armstrong
I think my Mama and Savannah must be special people in the Lord's eyes, as they have gone about doing generous and loving things without even a second thought. For me, it seems like the only thing that comes natural is aggravation and hard word
Nancy E. Turner
Experience has tutored me well that most will lie or cheat to get the better hand. It's why I prefer solitude to social interaction. - Bethany
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Someone who doesn't make the (Olympic) team might weep and collapse. In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby. We lost gracefully. And when someone won, he didn't act like he'd just become king of the world, either. Athletes in my day were simply humble in our victory.I believe we were more mature then...Maybe it's because the media puts so much pressure on athletes; maybe it's also the money. In my day we competed for the love of the sport...In my day we patted the guy who beat us on the back, wished him well, and that was it.
Louis Zamperini
I couldn't imagine that I'd ever fall in love again like I had with Gideon. For better or worse, he was my soulmate. The other half of me. In many ways, he was my reflection.
Sylvia Day
Every birthday comes with a great purpose and without our knowledge, it makes us wiser.
Debasish Mridha
She didn't mind a little rain. At least no one would see her cry.
Lisi Harrison
Give me a few minutes.”“You have time.” He sat in the grass.“Are you just going to sit there and watch me?”“Yes. Watching pretty peasant girls is what we poor little rich boys do best.”“Peasant?”He shrugged. “You started the name calling.
Ilona Andrews
God’s Word is a map you can safely follow as you travel through life.
Elizabeth George
Having the right attitude is fundamental to being an effective leader.
Jim George
Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.
Steve Jobs
It's not the law of religion nor the principles of morality that define our highways and pathways to God; only by the Grace of God are we led and drawn, to God. It is His grace that conquers a multitude of flaws and in that grace, there is only favor. Favor is not achieved; favor is received.
C. JoyBell C.
Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,quiet steady sound. Before it grew too darkwatched the blue iris leaning under the rain,the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.A voice. Almost recalled. There have been timesthe gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of ittoo distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebushpierces the table’s reflection, raindrops gazing from it.There have been hands laid on my shoulders.What has been said to me,how has my life replied?The rain, the rain...
Denise Levertov
A society that fails to water the life-seeds of its members may be capable of instructing its citizens, but will be incapable of truly educating its children or wholly embracing its youth.
Michael Meade
Let's Look at Subjective Religious Experiences This Way:What if ten thousand people went up to a mountain top, saw something, and then they all disagreed with what they saw, even people who largely agreed with each other? Even with this best possible analogy to subjective religious experiences we would still have a reason to think the lack of oxygen caused them all to hallucinate.
John W. Loftus
Thousands of miles from Georgia, beginning that night in England, my dad became a foreign-language speaker to me – and I was utterly charmed by it. I found the foreigner in myself.
Robert Lane Greene
Independence is counterfeit freedom. We think if we can make all our own choices and do our own thing, we will be free. But the opposite is true. By trying to be independent, we are attempting to take God’s place as the ruler of our lives. We can never succeed at creating happiness because we are the created, not the Creator.
Pauline Creeden
Have no fear. Trust in the vibrational currents of your life.
Alaric Hutchinson
Passivity is corrosive to the soul; it feeds on feelings of integrity and pride, and it can be as tempting as a drug.
Caroline Knapp
I’ve told you before, ma chérie, love is not about submission. It is the willingness to give of yourself. That is a great power and gift, if you allow yourself to wield it.
Monica Burns
Resentment is the "number one" offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have been not only mentally and physically ill we have been spiritually sick.
Alcoholics Anonymous
The word felt good, liberating. So, I repeat it. "Fuck." Then, again. And again. Because it made me someone else, someone normal and happy, someone who used words like that, like St. John. I repeated it, over and over until she walked away, wounded. Then, I was glad. And still, I kept repeating it, because that was the only thing that kept me from crying.
Alex Flinn
My mind is like clay, but thank goodness God knows how to mold it!
Mary Kate
Then maybe you’ll believe me when I say…you’re pretty fucking special, Laney Hill.
Cassia Leo
The crisis is a period in which a diseased social, economic, and political body or system cannot live on as before and is obliged, on pain of death, to undergo transformations that will give it a new lease on life. Therefore, this period of crisis is a historical moment of danger and suspense during which the crucial decisions and transformations are made, which will determine the future development of the system if any and its new social, economic, and political basis.
André Gunder Frank
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much much better.
Laurie Anderson
It took me a moment. I blinked, and suddenly it swam into focus and I had to frown very hard to keep myself from giggling out loud like the schoolgirl Deb had accused me of being. Because he had arranged the arms and legs in letters, and the letters spelled out a single small word: BOO. The three torsos were carefully arranged below the BOO in a quarter-circle, making a cute little Halloween smile. What a scamp.
Jeff Lindsay
When I turned to look at you, I was afraid to move again—the moment was just too beautiful to be lost.
David Levithan
It is often said that Islam is an egalitarian religion. There is much truth in this assertion. If we compare Islam at the time of its advent with the societies that surrounded it—the stratified feudalism of Iran and the caste system of India to the east, the privileged aristocracies of both Byzantine and Latin Europe to the west—the Islamic dispensation does indeed bring a message of equality. Not only does Islam not endorse such systems of social differentiation; it explicitly and resolutely rejects them. The actions and utterances of the Prophet, the honored precedents of the early rulers of Islam as preserved by tradition, are overwhelmingly against privilege by descent, by birth, by status, by wealth, or even by race, and insist that rank and honor are determined only by piety and merit in Islam.
Bernard Lewis
Peace is a way of life.Peace is a way of love.Peace is a heart’s forgiveness.Peace is a mind’s kindness.Peace is living in harmony.Peace is living with courtesy.Peace is living with trust.Peace is living with truth and trust.Peace is living with freeness.Peace is living with happiness.
Debasish Mridha
[When it comes to God] We can't run out of second chances...only time.
Robin Jones Gunn
You flesh bodies are so obsessed with goodness, yet no other form of life on earth is capable of such cruelty. You need only convince yourselves your transgressions serve some 'purpose.' Even if it is only greed, or lust, or the raw desire for power that drives you. You will spill the blood of your kinsmen, lay waste to the earth itself, wreak havoc, and cause unspeakable suffering---any and all sins are justified, as long as they are a means to your precous, righteous 'purpose'.
Maryrose Wood
Literature is language charged with meaning
Ezra Pound
With intimacy comes the possibility of “engulfment” or being taken hostage by the demands of others. We may have distorted perceptions of the “demands” and obligations placed upon us by those who claim to love us. Trusting that love to be unconditional is almost impossible for us, and we are always scanning for the unstated “subtext” or hidden “agenda” connected to this love.
Mary Crocker Cook
Hard work, determination, and talent are key for any successful venture. But sometimes you need that fourth ingredient: dumb luck. Luck can never replace hard work and talent, but sometimes it can win out over both.
Abby Rosmarin
Novels are just another kind of cross-dressing, aren't they?
John Irving
If high aspirations = high fear, overcoming high fear = achieving high aspirations.
Richie Norton
I'm not much for parties. Sometimes you have to wear a funny hat, sometimes they expect you to eat sushi, which is like eating bait. And there's always some totally drunk girl who thinks you're smitten by her, when what you're really wondering is if she'll vomit on your shirt or instead on your shoes.
Dean Koontz
He had intended his address to be somewhat more comprehensive than this but was forced to cut it short, having been stabbed between the ribs with a broadsword.
Robert Kroese
To create a peaceful world, inhale the love of life and exhale the beauty of life.
Debasish Mridha
Oneness with God is not a dream, it is the only reality. Everything else is an illusion.
E'yen A. Gardner
Islam is in a formative period struggling to consolidate the vast reach won by both inspiration and force at its founding. Two centuries along, the faith of Muhammad hangs like an intricate veil: a religion still searching for institutional wholeness, a set of lessons to live by.
Ron Suskind
One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.
Criss Jami
The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.
Dorothy Day
People don't know to make a leaf, but they know how to destroy one.
Hope Jahren
I’ll be like Esther. Your daughter.”“You ain’t that strong.
John Northcutt Young
All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.
Steven Millhauser
Extreme anxiety, fear, exhaustion, and lack of other viable options are what cause a person to surrender everything. Desperation is also the raw material of drastic change. Crisis spurs critical, dramatic shifts in a person’s psyche. Only a person who is willing to lose everything will transform himself or herself. Only by moving outside our comfort zone of the past – letting go of a former being – will a person expand their state of conscious awareness. Now that I am desperate, I am dangerous. I am also ripe for transformation.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Introverts don't like small talk conversation, but they typically don't mind writing. The more people can "see" you on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or a blog, the more they will feel like they know you, even though you don't have one-on-one interaction with them.
Thom S. Rainer
If we are to wield great magic, then let us learn from great teachers: the alchemists -- magicians par excellence.
Lawren Leo