Quotes by American Authors - Page 225

In any case, this was a deep human prejudice. Human beings to find a central command in any organization. States had governments. Corporations had CEOs. Schools had principals. Armies had generals. Human beings tended to believe that without central command, chaos would overwhelm the organization and nothing significant could be accomplished.
Michael Crichton
Every journey taken always includes the path not taken, the detour through hell, the crossroads of indecision and the long way home.
Shannon L. Alder
Excuse me if I have/some place in my mind/where I go time to time.
Tom Petty
Be Courageous: Succeed or Fail Monumentally!
Ken Poirot
Real comfort is found when I understand that I am held in the hollow of the hand of the One who created and rules all things. The most valuable thing in my life is God's love, a love that no one can take away. When my identity is rooted in him, the storms of trouble will not blow me away. This is the comfort we offer people. We don't comfort them by saying things will work out. They may not. The people around them may change, but they may not. The Bible tells us again and again that everything around us is in the process of being taken away. God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall. Comfort is found by sinking our roots into the unseen reality of God's ever-faithful love.
Paul David Tripp
The comfort was peculiarly chilling.
Shannon A. Thompson
give me the worldbut for Christ's sake,do not sugercoat it.give me it rawand gleaming withtruth.i want the madnessto twirl me around untili can no longer stand.i refuse to be drunkon a soft world.the world is cruel,my love,you must understandthat,but in that understandingyou must understand this,too, just because it is crueldoes not mean it is notbeautiful.
Christopher Poindexter
What man knows is little enough and most of his general concepts in every field are vitiated by the artificial concepts he has created to cover his ignorance. These concepts must be destroyed. One tool exists that can accomplish this destruction, and this tool is in your hands. It is simply curiosity—the instinct to ask and to question. It should be kept sharp and used without mercy.
Charles H. Hapgood
A leader may symbolize and express what is best in his people like Pericles or what is worst like Hitler but he cannot successfully express what is only in his heart and not in theirs.
Charles Yost
Judges are apt to be naive simple-minded men.
O. W. Holmes II
When we know that it's a planet just like this one, only with a better climate and worse people--when we know they're all propertarians, and fight wars, and make laws, and eat while other starve, and anyhow are all getting older and having bad luck and getting rheumatic knees and corns on their toes just like people there...when we know all that, why does it still look so happy--as if life there must be happy?..."... "If you can see the whole thing," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives....But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the art is, is to see it as the moon. They way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.
Ursula K Le Guin
People treat having a kid as somehow retiring from success. Quitting. Have you seen a baby? They’re pretty cute. Loving them is pretty easy. Smiling babies should actually be categorized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful antidepressant. Being happy is really the definition of success, isn’t it?
Jim Gaffigan
For years I lived my life suspended, trapped by the past, unable to move into the future. Like every wounded child I just wanted to turn back time and be in that paradise again, in that moment of remembered rapture where I felt loved, where I felt a sense of belonging. We can never go back. I know that now. We can go forward .We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we were little and had no voice to speak the heart's longing. All the years of my life I thought I was searching for love I found, retrospectively, to be years where I was simply trying to recover what had been lost, to return to the first home, to get back the rapture of our first love. I was not really ready to love or be loved in the present. I was still mourning--clinging to the broken heart of girlhood, to broken connections. When that mourning ceased I was able to love again.
Bell Hooks
At the end of the day, we all live in this world together and to practice bringing peace onto Twitter is a huge step into bringing peace into our world.
Germany Kent
If you really think about it, humans must look really strange to animals. We have more than one way of communicating, we're ashamed of our bodies as to where it's a law to wear fabrics, we destroy natural civilizations for artificial ones, and despite being of the same species, we always look past that aspect and question, judge, hurt and kill each other over what makes us different.
Lauren Lola
The world is endlessly fascinating to those who take the time to look.
Marty Rubin
When you committed your life to Christ, he moved into the center; but you must keep him there through worship.
Rick Warren
We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the things that draw us in-and why should any of us have more than a handful of those? The only work really worth doing-the only work you can do convincingly-is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.
David Bayles
When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”What will you answer? “We all dwell togetherTo make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
T.S Eliot
Fighting with Harper stirred his blood, and walking out on her had only intensified his need, as though the brief separation was more than he could bear. All he could think about was getting back to her. Undressing her. And fucking her until he worked whatever this desperate feeling was out of his system.
Mandy Baxter
Ancestors from all times have shared their essence with you. Accept the light and let go of the rest.
Amy Leigh Mercree
Sleep is a kind of peace, and I have not yet earned peace.
Dean Koontz
Laughter enlightens our hearts and lightens life’s burdens.
Debasish Mridha
The sound of natural things was wonderful to us. In the middle of all the suffering, it seemed pure, untouched.
Diet Eman
Time to make herself scarce because, hell, she didn’t want to pass that thunderhead on her way out.
Katherine McIntyre
Whatever's on your mind is also on God's heart.
Craig Groeschel
Some people dream of SUCCESS while other wake up and work hard at it.
Barbara Rubel
At some point, I had to start laughing, because I was all wrung out from crying.
Julie Metz
If some people are “outed,” are other people “inned”? Can we say that someone has been “besided” or “overed”?
David Sedaris
Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and truths are subjective. Life itself is a kind of illusion. Blah, blah, blah, let's have another scotch.
Dean Koontz
The best fiction is true.
Kinky Friedman
Passing pleasures, like passing clouds, are all we have.
Marty Rubin
The game of love is complicated, but love is not complicated.
Marty Rubin
But tonight I'll go alone. You're about as stealthy as a lame elephant. See you later." She patted me on the shoulder and took off down the path, leaving me behind, both charmed and insulted. The side effects of hanging around Charlotte Holmes.
Brittany Cavallaro
In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't, trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are–brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'ge
Dan Wells
One person's garbage is another person's commodity.
Aleksandar Hemon
We have to be bigger than the things we suffer.
Shelly Crane
Ask anyone and they'll most likely say their family is crazy, and if they don't say their family is crazy, their friends are crazy. That's because everyone is crazy after taking the mask off. People are most themselves when not really trying to fit in, when either alone or around those already closest to them, and that is crazy.
Criss Jami
Dr. Richard Selzer is a surgeon and a favorite author of mine. He writes the most beautiful and compassionate descriptions of his patients and the human dramas they confront. In his book Letters to a Young Doctor, he said that most young people seem to be protected for a time by an imaginary membrane that shields them from horror. They walk in it every day but are hardly aware of its presence. As the immune system protects the human body from the unseen threat of harmful bacteria, so this mythical membrane guards them from life-threatening situations. Not every young person has this protection, of course, because children do die of cancer, congenital heart problems, and other disorders. But most of them are shielded—and don’t realize it. Then, as years roll by, one day it happens. Without warning, the membrane tears, and horror seeps into a person’s life or into the life of a loved one. It is at this moment that an unexpected theological crisis presents itself.
James C. Dobson
Men," said Mr. Kyle, "people have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love--the deepest kind of love.
Wilson Rawls
What makes you wise is not what you learn, but what you practice. What makes you wealthy is not what you earn, but what you invest. So, invest in what to practice, and practice what to invest.
Michael Peshkam
In the great orchestra we call life, you have an instrument and a song, and you owe it to God to play them both sublimely.
Max Lucado
Hang you, DeVere! She's a close friend, nothing more." He furrowed his brow once again. "Though I do fear of late that she entertains some...expectations.""You think the young widow may aspire to quite another surrogate role? They all do, ol' chap. Expectations and demands—titles, money, time, attention. The female half of the species are little better than vampires, sucking away one's very lifeblood.
Victoria Vane
The moments of silence are gone. We run from them into the rush of unimportant things, so filled is the quiet with the painful whispers of all that goes unspoken. Busy-ness is our drug of choice, numbing our minds just enough to keep us from dwelling on all that we fear we can’t change. A compilation of coping mechanisms, we have become our fatigue. Unwilling or unable to cut ourselves free of this modern machine we have built, we’re dragged in its wake all too quickly toward our end. The virtue of a society’s culture is reflected in the physical, mental, and emotional health of its people. The time has come to part ways with all that is toxic, and preserve our quality of life.
L.M. Browning
I would apologize for my rudeness, if I had any manners. Happily, I don't.
Tamora Pierce
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
Frank Herbert
I'd like to sit down with him and pick his brain, just a tiny bite somewhere in the frontal lobe to get a taste of his thoughts" -Warm Bodies
Isaac Marion
Making amends is not only saying the words but also being willing to listen to how your behavior caused another’s pain, and then the really hard part…changing behavior.
David W. Earle
The worst time to give someone your opinion, is when no one has asked for it.
Cory Stallworth
There is only one sin, only one, and that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right of a husband, you rob his children of a father. When you lie you steal someone's right to truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no more wretched act than stealing. A man who takes what is not his to take, be it life or a loaf of naan, I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him.
Khaled Hosseini
Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do with the other end?" This is answering an everyday matter in terms of the metaphysical.When the question is, "Master, what is the fundamental principle of Buddhism?" Then he replies, "There is enough breeze in this fan to keep me cool." That is answering the metaphysical in terms of the everyday, and that is, more or less, the principle zen works on. The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
Alan W. Watts
Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become a part of the edge and thus a part of the boundary, the definition which gives the whole its shape?
Lucy Grealy
Let us remember that we need to forgive to be forgiven.
James E. Faust
Of course present knowledge of psychology is nearer to zero than to complete perfection, and its applications to teaching must therefore be often incomplete, indefinite, and insecure. The application of psychology to teaching is more like that of botany and chemistry to farming than like that of physiology and pathology to medicine. Anyone of good sense can farm fairly well without science, and anyone of good sense can teach fairly well without knowing and applying psychology. Still, as the farmer with the knowledge of the applications of botany and chemistry to farming is, other things being equal, more successful than the farmer without it, so the teacher will, other things being equal, be the more successful who can apply psychology, the science of human nature, to the problems of the school. (pp. 9-10)
Edward Lee Thorndike
Your mindset brings together your attitude, perceptions, experience, interpretations, opinions, beliefs, values, and understanding to determine how you think, act, walk, talk, behave, and engage.
Susan C.Young
What I’ve learned is there’s a scientifically proven phenomenon that’s attached to gratitude, and that if you consciously take note of what is good in your life, quantifiable benefits happen.
Deborah Norville
To be effective as future organizations, we must know our fellow leaders better, deeper.
Holly Duckworth
It takes some intelligence and insight to figure out you're gay and then a tremendous amount of balls to live it and live it proudly.
Jason Bateman
Because I care about human beings, I want them to be free to do what is right for them. Isn't that more important than mere peace on earth? Isn't freedom, even dangerous freedom, preferable to the safest slavery, to peace bought with ignorance, cowardice, and submission?
CrimethInc.
Once," Balinda begins softly, "when I was in the emergency room with my mother they brought in a murderer who had been shot and was dying, right there in front of us. I watched as the nurse touched his face and reassured him and I could not believe they were being so nice to him.""What happened?" Jill asked."My mother rose up, took my arm, gripped it as if she was a weight lifter and said, 'he was a beautiful baby once and his mother loved him'.
Kris Radish