Quotes by American Authors - Page 2385

When you're having a depressive surge painful memories can start to emerge.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
The endorphin high of birth will fade, but its trace remains with you forever, its fingerprints indelible proof of love's presence and daily grandeur. You have offered up your prayer. You have vowed service to a new world and laid a bedrock of earthly faith. You have chosen your sword, your shield, and where you will fall. Whatever the morrow brings, these things, these people, will be with you always. The power of choice, of a life, a lover, a place to stand, will be there to be called upon and make fresh sense of your tangled history. More important, it will also be there when you waver, when you're lost, providing you with the elements of a new compass, encased within your heart.
Bruce Springsteen
Who thinks to interview their own mother? As a self-fixated teen, I never imagined that she had an actual personal history. To my young eyes, she was Source of Cash Obsessed With De-Cluttering
Jancee Dunn
Every person struggles with the self to find and kindle their special radiance, which comes from cultivating kindness, charity, and love.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Beauty can be treacherous.
George R.R. Martin
Often it takes more guts than skill to open doors. Once the doors get opened, then it's up to you.
Julieanne O'Connor
Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.
John Holt
And you, Mom. I loved you. You've asked if i felt and understood that you loved me. of course I did. And you know this. I loved your love because it kept me safe and happy and wanted, and it existed beyond words and hugs and eyes.
Lisa Genova
Belief in Yahweh doesn't come with your mind. It comes with your heart. When you only believe in things you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands, it is idolatry.
Lynn Austin
Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane – not just insane but totally so – or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out and now knew that Fat was totally insane.
Philip K Dick
People are creators. But I doubt that many realize this. We are not meant to go out into the world and find flawless things, we are not meant to sit down and have flawless things fall into our laps. But we are creators. We can create a beautiful thing out of what we have. The problem with idealistic people is that they see themselves as receivers instead of creators, they end up hunting for the flaw in everything in order to measure it up to their ideals. Now, when you see yourself as a creator, you can look at a chunk of marble and see the angel within it. Then you carve until you have set that angel free.
C. JoyBell C.
You can enjoy encouragement coming from outside but you cannot need for it to come from outside.
Vladimir Zworykin
How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII
Barbara W. Tuchman
When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience. To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
Timothy J. Keller
To be a leader meant that sometimes you had to look away from the pain
Gregory Benford
One is ejected into the world like a dirty little mummy; the roads are slippery with blood and no one knows why it should be so. Each one is traveling his own way and, though the earth be rotting with good things, there is no time to pluck the fruits; the procession scrambles toward the exit sign, and such a panic is there, such a sweat to escape, that the weak and the helpless are trampled into the mud and their cries are unheard.
Henry Miller
Cortax: “Sometimes, life doesn't work out the way you wanted or expected, but that's fine. Keep your head up, chest out, emotions and morals in check and be proud of the person you are. Don't let those unexpected surprises keep you from reaching your goals. And again, be proud, like I am, proud to see my son grow up into a man.
Michael Rogers
When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.
Frank Herbert
I know why she cried like that. She cried because she wasn't finished grieving the loss of me. When someone has an exaggerated emotional reaction to something in the present, it's usually because they haven't resolved something in their past.
Kate McGahan
Important principles may and must be flexible.
Abraham Lincoln
Instead of asking, “How can I ease my suffering?” yoga would have us ask,“How can I better serve my brothers and sisters?” Because only in answering the latter can we hope to answer the former.
Darren Main
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
Frank Moore Colby
He sighed, breaking the eye contact. “I just wanted you to know why I’m cautious. When the divorce was final, I swore I’d never let another woman into my heart. Love made me weak.” He forced himself to look her in the eyes. “I’ve never met anyone like you, and today, I would’ve died for you and wouldn’t have regretted it for a second.
Lisa Kessler
Letting go is an inside job, something only we can do for ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
A sad, plangent music. In the British camp, Sharpe thought, they would be singing, but no one was singing here.
Bernard Cornwell
The images start to darken and she feels another hunger well up in her, this one having to do with another kind of desire. The desire to feed, to possess, and the aggressive thrill of a predator capturing and killing its prey as it tears into unspoiled flesh. Its teeth ripping and rending and the satisfying coppery taste of blood. There is the ultimate moment of surrender of drinking away the life essence. The pinnacle of lust which mounts in the very last breath, when the light drains from the victim's eyes and when the soul fades... Then there is only a triumphant cry to the moonlight and the beckoning depths of the ever waiting water.
Melissa St. Hilaire
Man has no ability to repair this damaged planet. The flaw in human nature is too great. God is our only hope!
Billy Graham
You can own an elephant or a bank or power thereof but if there's no personal breast bliss all you own is a lot of dead atoms and ideas.
Allen Ginsberg
You're gon' have to say to your self, am I gon' believe what them fools say about me today?
Kathryn Stockett
Even a flower can feel the touch of kindness.
Debasish Mridha
If after reading this book you come to my home and brutally murder me, I do not blame you.
Jesse Andrews
There is within the human heart a quality of intelligence which has been known to surpass that attributed to the human mind.
Aberjhani
Books act like a developing fluid on film. That is, they bring into consciousness what you didn’t know you knew.
Clifton Fadiman
Being in the habit of saying "Thank you," of making sure that people receive attention so they know you value them, of not presuming that people will always be there--this is a good habit, regardless...make sure to give virtual and actual high-fives to those who rock and rock hard.
Sarah Wendell
Relaxation and anxiety are incompatible responses that cannot coexist.
Randy Kamen
I really wished he hadn't made me hate to read the Bible. Having it shoved down my throat all my life had made me bitter toward reading it. I believed it, but my dad had used it to his benefit too many times and ignored the parts in there that would point out his wrongs. Like judging Beau without even knowing him. That was in the Bible too.
Abbi Glines
Abundance in life comes from generosity.
Debasish Mridha
What did you do to her?” There were a thousand things he’d
Sarah MacLean
My nails clawed against the smooth tiles as I pushed up onto my hands and knees. I rose unsteadily to my feet.Speed is my ally. Breathe. In and out. Focus. Time is my power.
Lori M. Lee
Although I'm sure there are plenty of tall, gorgeous, life-of-the-party guys who are also true to their wives, I happen to believe that a disproportionate number of them are cheaters.
Emily Giffin
The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future - indeed Schrödinger most famous thought experiment goes to show that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted - but to describe reality, the present world.Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
Ursula K Le Guin
The man kisses me and I just hop right on him like he's the hottest new ride at Disneyland.
Karen Marie Moning
Give me kisses! Nay, 'tis true I am just as rich as you; And for every kiss I owe, I can pay you back, you know. Kiss me, then, Every moment, and again.
John Godfrey Saxe
...and on some nights in bed, in that moment before sleep erased the day, I would picture the way the sky in Lapland looked the morning I left, how the train had sped south beneath a sky that was brighter than it had been in weeks. It had pulsed with reds and oranges, as though hiding a beating heart.
Vendela Vida
Edward had a personal horror of violence and never endorsed or excused it, though in a documentary he made about the conflict he said that actions like the bombing of pilgrims at Tel Aviv airport 'did more harm than good,' which I remember thinking was (a) euphemistic and (b) a slipshod expression unworthy of a professor of English.
Christopher Hitchens
The mountain trees that grew between the pines were a brilliant blaze of fall colors, like fire against the emerald green of the pines, firs and pruces. And it was, as I'd told myself long ago, the year's last passionate love affair before it grew old and died from the frosty bite of winter.
V.C. Andrews
That's the downside of growing up. There's a lot of pretending involved. We frequently act like someone other than who we really are because we don't know or aren't comfortable with our true selves.
Connor Franta
How foolish to yearn to ask the very person who'd caused the pain to heal it
Judith McNaught
You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!
Stephen King
There might, Gentlemen, be an impropriety in my taking notice, in this Address to you, of an anonymous production, but the manner in which that performance has been introduced to the army, the effect it was intended to have, together with some other circumstances, will amply justify my observations on the tendency of that Writing. With respect to the advice given by the Author, to suspect the Man, who shall recommend moderate measures and longer forbearance, I spurn it, as every Man, who regards liberty, and reveres that justice for which we contend, undoubtedly must; for if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.
George Washington
Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?" "What's that?""The world didn't come to an end.
Charles M. Schulz
There are moments in life when it is all turned inside out--what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible, and all your levelheaded efforts to keep a tight ontological control are rendered silly and indulgent.
Aleksandar Hemon
I am not afraid,” she said; which seemed quite presumptuous enough.“You are not afraid of suffering?”“Yes, I am afraid of suffering. But I am not afraid of ghosts. And I think people suffer too easily,” she added.“I don’t believe you do,” said Ralph, looking at her with his hands in his pockets.“I don’t think that’s a fault,” she answered. “It is not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.”“You were not, certainly.”“I am not speaking of myself.” And she turned away a little.“No, it isn’t a fault,” said her cousin. “It’s a merit to be strong.”“Only, if you don’t suffer, they call you hard,” Isabel remarked. They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had returned from the gallery, and paused in the hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Ralph presented his companion with her bed-room candle, which he had taken from a niche. “Never mind what they call you,” he said. “When you do suffer, they call you an idiot. The great point is to be as happy as possible.
Henry James
To guard our character with unwavering commitment, our best protection comes from being humbly aware of our vulnerability.
Lee Ellis
The spell started to brush across my skin, tasting me, telling me what it wanted....Nothing compared to power flowing through you, over you, around you. It was a alluring, sensual as it wound through my hair, cuddled with my skin. It wanted me to swirl the power, to tickle it with light and sound, and it sang to me of spells long lost.
N. E. Conneely
So, if you're a doctor, how can you recognize that you're having a feeling? Some tips from Dr. Zinn:Most emotions have physical counterparts. Anxiety may be associated with a tightness of the abdomen or excessive diaphoresis; anger may be manifested by a generalized muscle tightness or a clenching of the jaw; sexual arousal may be noted by a tingling of the loins or piloerection; and sadness may be felt by conjunctival injection or heaviness of the chest.
Anne Fadiman
Darkness enveloped us again, and for the first time in years, I welcomed it.
Melika Dannese Lux
Adrian suddenly glanced up at me. Our gazes locked, and I felt like he could read my mind. How often did he think about that kiss? And if he really was crazy about me, did he imagine more than just kissing? Did he fantasize about me? What kinds of things did he think about? His lips on my neck? His hand on my leg? And was that leg bare . . . ?
Richelle Mead
What is allowed us is disagreeable, what is denied us causes intense desire.
Jeff Wheeler
There is no way to deter old age from its grim duty, but a life of accomplishments makes up in quality for what it cannot add in quantity.
Dr. Sherwin Nuland