Quotes by American Authors - Page 226

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
Gordon W. Allport
From now on whenever I read a math book, I'm going to try to figure out by myself how everything was done, before looking at the solution. Even if I don't figure it out, I think I'll be able to see the beauty of a proof then.
Donald E. Knuth
Go figure, that happened to be his same style of flirtation as well—annoy her half to death until, before she could stop herself, she confessed her deep darks and bonded with him to a degree she never had before.
Katherine McIntyre
You see, God didn't create us to merely survive. He created us to thrive! We were made for abundant life.
Dana Arcuri
As she’d walked along this street, a million stars stretched across an indigo canvas, holding all the freedom she’d yearned for every night.
Katherine McIntyre
They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.
Sherman Alexie
You’d be hard-pressed to find an old person who would trade in a true friend for any amount of popularity or fame. You'd also be hard-pressed to find a young person who wouldn't.
Dan Pearce
Her mouth— ah, that lush, sweet mouth— was a garden, and I was on my back, face tipped in adoration to the sun for giving me such brilliance, delightful aromas, and the indescribable lightness of being with her.
Julia Kent
Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are.
Shonda Rhimes
If we require some kind of sign, or "proof," for our belief in God, then we believe, or place our tust, not in God but in the sign or proof.
Robert L. Short
I want to write a book like a cloud that changes as it goes.
Ronald Sukenick
And then, on the final day, it was time for the faux Underground Railroad. This is the part that no one believes. "No adult would ever do that," they say. "You can't be remembering that right." I am, in fact, remembering it perfectly. The counselors "shackled" us together with jump ropes so we were "like slave families" and then released us into the woods. We were given a map with a route to "freedom" in "the North", which must have been only three or four hundred feet but felt like much more. Then a counselor on horseback followed ten minutes later, acting as a bounty hunter. Hearing hooves, I crouched being a rock with Jason Baujelais and Sari Brooker, begging them to be quiet so we weren't caught and "whipped." I was too young, self-involved, and dissociated to wonder what kind of impact this had on my black classmates. All I knew was that I was miserable. We heard the sound of hooves growing closer and Max Kitnick's light asthma wheezes from beind an oak tree. "Shut up," Jason hissed, and I knew we were cooked. When the counselor appeared, Sari started to cry.
Lena Dunham
Keep calm and let your heart sing the song of kindness.
Debasish Mridha
I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.
Drew Barrymore
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this—through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication—we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Kelly took a deep breath. "And I'm sorry I ignored you last week." She scratched her neck. "And you know what? If you think you're a girl..."George braced for Kelly's next words."Then I think you're a girl too!
Alex Gino
To those leaning on the sustaining infinite to-day is big with blessings.
Mary Baker Eddy
It seems that by the time the singular beauty of a flower in bloom can no longer pierce the veil of black or obsessive thoughts in a person's mind, that mind's connection to the sensual world has grown dangerously frayed.
Michael Pollan
The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.
Ludwig von Mises
We know that there are many animals on this continent not found in the Old World. These must have been carried from here to the ark, and then brought back afterwards. Were the peccary, armadillo, ant-eater, sloth, agouti, vampire-bat, marmoset, howling and prehensile-tailed monkey, the raccoon and muskrat carried by the angels from America to Asia? How did they get there? Did the polar bear leave his field of ice and journey toward the tropics? How did he know where the ark was? Did the kangaroo swim or jump from Australia to Asia? Did the giraffe, hippopotamus, antelope and orang-outang journey from Africa in search of the ark? Can absurdities go farther than this?
Robert G. Ingersoll
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
Robert A. Heinlein
The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.
Philip Gourevitch
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and nights.
Kahlil Gibran
Many people spend more time looking at their failures than focusing on their successes.
Lolly Daskal
We are in the energy dictatorship that calls itself the United States of America.
Steven Magee
Within the nature of every person is a desire to feel appreciated, to feel needed, and to be loved.
Ellen J. Barrier
I tried to concentrate on the angel's voice instead."Bella, please! Bella, listen to me, please, please, please, Bella, please!" he begged.Yes, I wanted to say. Anything. But I couldn't find my lips. "Carlisle!" the angel called, agony in his perfect voice. "Bella, Bella, no, oh please, no, no!" And the angel was sobbing tearless, broken sobs.The angel shouldn't weep, it was wrong. I tried to find him, to tell him everything was fine, but the water was so deep, it was pressing on me, and I couldn't breathe.
Stephenie Meyer
Natural isn't the same as right. Normal isn't the same as moral. Everyone deserves a say in what happens to the world.
Audrey Greathouse
Zoe stopped one last time in front of the mirror, adjusting her new American dress. She didn’t see the dress, however. She saw what the big Russian did to her. She saw what al-Qaeda did to her. She saw a person shunned by her Persian village. She saw ugliness. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw deficiency.
Michael Benzehabe
If you are going to do that, would you mind not jostling the bed so much?' came a sarcastic voice near the head board. 'Perhaps you could roll around on the floor.
Julie Kagawa
The success of strategy management undoubtedly lies in the “timely execution.
Pearl Zhu
Do you mind if we leave here so I can chain smoke 'til I throw up so it will be easier to quit?
Robyn Peterman
One of the rocks in my soulbag, a little grey rock that I had picked up on a certain day in a certain place in the hills above the river in the Silver Time, a little piece of my world, that became my world. Every night I took it out and held it in my hand while I lay in bed waiting to sleep, thinking of the sunlight on the hills above the river, listening to the soft shushing of the ship’s systems, like a mechanical sea.
Ursula K Le Guin
My grandfather was crying. The kind of quiet that is quiet and a secret. The kind of crying that only I noticed. I thought about him going into my mom's room when she was little and hitting my mom and holding up her report card and saying that her bad grades would never happen again. And I think now that maybe he meant my older brother. Or my sister. Or me. That he would make sure that he was the one to work in a mill. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know if it's better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure she has a better life than you do. I just don't know.
Stephen Chbosky
Do you think dogs enjoy fucking? Or is it something so primal, so intrinsically necessary that it just happens, just occurs? Do you think animals can fall in love? I let you fuck me from behind almost every single night, always wanting to be kissed, but still, I refuse to roll over.
Kris Kidd
I'm sure I look like a drowned cat.""You look fine. The wet look works for you."I scowled. "Now I know you're lying.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you
Walt Whitman
His style as a writer places him in the category of the immortals, and his courage as a critic outlives the bitter battles in which he engaged. As a result, we use the word 'Orwellian' in two senses: The first describes a nightmare state, a dystopia of untrammelled power; the second describes the human qualities that are always ranged in resistance to such regimes, and that may be more potent and durable than we sometimes dare to think.
Christopher Hitchens
I believe in energies. Good energy has served me well. Being fair with others, compassionate towards them, remaining humble, and making a difference to someone are just a few of the things that I have seen create good energy. Beautiful things. Human things. I do my best to surround myself with these types of things, to generate an atmosphere thick with such energy. It has kept me safe in many situations. I have taken risks in the past, and managed to avoid harm by the protection of the good energy I have created around me. I believe that ugliness creates more ugliness. And no matter how touched by ugliness you are, you do not have to give in to it and start spreading it beyond yourself. I have seen this sickness and what it does to a person, and those around them.
Ashly Lorenzana
Oh, brothers and sisters, families can be forever! Do not let the lures [or the irritants] of the moment draw you away from them! Divinity, eternity, and family--they go together, hand in hand, and so must we!
Spencer W. Kimball
I definitely learned a lesson this time. I know that I can be broken. I am not as tough as I thought. I see it now. At this point, it's the only thing good that came out of all of this. I know myself better now and know what I have to do.
Henry Rollins
Where you've been or haven't been does not make you who you are." -Faolan
Brittany L. Engels
There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.
Robert Frost
Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The "war" is being fought along the line between sin and righteousness in every family. It is being fought along the line between truth and falsehood in every school... Between justice and injustice in every legislature... Between integrity and corruption in every office... Between love and hate in every ethnic group... Between pride and humility in every sport... Between the beautiful and the ugly in every art... Between right doctrine and wrong doctrine in every church... Between sloth and diligence between coffee breaks. It is not a waste to fight the battle for truth and faith and love on any of these fronts.
John Piper
There is something simply beautiful and simply innocent, in being human. It is just so innocent and beautiful. I love it.
C. JoyBell C.
– and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are alright; you can talk to them and try to help them out. But pompous fools – guys who are fools and covering it all over and impressing people as to how wonderful they are with all this hocus pocus – THAT, I CANNOT STAND! An ordinary fool isn’t a faker; an honest fool is all right. But a dishonest fool is terrible!
Richard Feynman
How can you reform when you are always busy conforming?
Debasish Mridha M.D.
He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate's face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other's skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath.
Victoria Schwab
At the end of the day, only what we do for Christ will last. Appreciate each day, one another, and the vessels God may use to acknowledge our individual and collective skillsets and let’s always remember the importance of planting seeds in our own lives, i.e., investing in ourselves and our spiritual purpose. If we can achieve this, we will be able to reflect on the journey and see the legacy we have built for our loved ones and the blessings we have sewn for God’s glory.
Lorna Jackie Wilson
> Why does everything that lives have to die?< So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours forever, is never precious.
Chaim Potok
I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number.
Carl Sagan
A leader who is through learning is through.
John Wooden
Tonight isn’t for the baby. This is just you and me.
Katee Robert
What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well.
Glenn Close
They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either.
Lauren Willig
A man who says he has never been scared is either lying or else he's never been any place or done anything.
Louis L'Amour
Campuses are bubbles, artificial environments that insulate students from the life of the competitive marketplace. The more exact truth is that our campuses offer students the privileges of liberty without the corresponding responsibilities.
Peter Augustine Lawler
Meditation is doing what you are doing - whether you are doing formal meditation or child care.
Norman Fischer
It's not the fact that some people disagree with the protests. That is as much a right as the protests themselves. It is the hateful, profane, condescending way some have expressed their discontent that baffles me. How do you criticize actions you've deemed disrespectful and divisive and an affront to civilized behavior with rhetoric to the same end? That's like the devil judging the Grim Reaper for harvesting souls.
Carlos Wallace