Quotes by American Authors - Page 2457

Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.
Mitch Albom
Great artists are a little too gifted to be bound by boxes and labels, and in saying that, the label 'artist' is to be used lightly.
Criss Jami
The character to follow thru on commitments made to others is built by following thru on commitments made to self.
Orrin Woodward
Happiness and self-confidence can be the by-products of other things, but they cannot really be goals unto themselves.
Julie Lythcott-Haims
One uncontrolled character flaw can ruin your greatest accomplishment.
Wayde Goodall
Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly “free” state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot.
Tiffany Madison
Try repeating “man is an animal" a few times, just to notice how unconvincing it sounds. There seems to be no way to get this idea into our heads, except by long rumination over the facts of evolution or perhaps by exposure to a primitive tribe or by being raised on a farm. Primitives sometimes see little difference between themselves and the animals around them. Karl von den Steinen was told by a Xingu that the only difference between them and the monkey was that they monkeys lacked the bow and arrow. And Jules Henry observed on the Kningang that dogs are not considered pets, like some of the other animals, but are on a level of emotional equality, like a relative. But in our own Western culture we have, for the most part, set a great distance between ourselves and the rest of nature, and language helps us to do this. Thus we say that a sheep “drops" its lamb, but a woman “gives birth"—it’s much more noble. Yet we have the right to make such distinctions because we assign the meaning to the world by naming names of things; we inhabit a different sphere and we capitalize naturally on the privilege.
Ernest Becker
China is a political beast, with the Party at its heart, and the importance of political and regulatory due diligence cannot be overstated.
Jeremy Gordon
But for a moment I stay there, suspended above the green swell of the land as though thrown up onto the crest of a wave, seeing for the first time a break in the at horizon. For this the boats crossed the ocean, the wagons climbed the mountain pass. For this the songs were sung with desert all around. This is what is given: the promise there is still a way, if we can find it, the promise we can always be renewed.
Kermit Roosevelt III
I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.
Christopher Hitchens
When you realize who you are and why you're here, then peace will be there.
Debasish Mridha
Stay positive, stay strong, stay together and just keep going!
Tanya Masse
Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.
Russell Banks
How we understand the person and character of God the Father affects every aspect of our lives. It affects far more than what we normally call the "religious" aspect of our lives. If God is the Creator of the entire universe, then it must follow that He is Lord of the whole universe. No part of the world is outside of His lordship. His Holy character has something to say about economics, politics, athletics, romance - everything with which we are involved.
R.C. Sproul
See, guys freak out. They hit critical mass and blast nuclear, white-hot anger out over the world like walking flamethrowers. But girls freak in. They absorb the pain and bitterness and keep right on sponging it up until they drown.
Laura Wiess
When people don't want to come nothing will stop them.
Sol Hurok
I like these experts because they seem decent, and because I feel I know a true sentence when I hear one now. They do not know what my mother remembered. I don't know what my mother remembered either.
Elizabeth Strout
You keep squintin' in Savage's dark corners, you gonna wish yourself blind.
Alexandra Sirowy
...by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it's too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?
Robert Penn Warren
I've never wanted a heart as much as I want yours.
Rae Hachton
Don't you just love the idea of cooking flowers? I imagine them bursting into bloom, right in the pan.
Ruth Reichl
I thought of my mother as Queen Christina, cool and sad, eyes trained on some distant horizon. That was where she belonged, in furs and palaces of rare treasures, fireplaces large enough to roast a reindeer, ships of Swedish maple.
Janet Fitch
They don’t have classes on bravery in middle school. If they did I’d have signed up. It would have been helpful to learn how to stare down what I feared most and not blink.
Shannon Wiersbitzky
The skin is an integral part of the body and depends upon the general system for its supply of food and to carry away its waste. Skin health depends primarily upon the general health of the body. All attempts to deal with the skin as an independent entity, without due regard to its reliance upon the general system, must of necessity result in failure. The skin is nourished by the blood and there is no other source from which it can draw sustenance. "Skin foods" are all frauds. These are composed chiefly of grease. No fat can be assimilated by the skin or other tissues of the body until it has first been broken down into its constituent fatty acids in the process of digestion. Even were this not true, the skin contains very little fat and these "skin foods" would still not constitute proper nourishment for it. Blood is the only skin food.
Herbert M. Shelton
Zen is a journey of exploration and a way of living that, in and of itself, does not belong to any one religion or tradition. It is about experiencing life in the here and now and about removing the dualistic distinctions between "I" and "you" between "subject" and "objective", between our spiritual and our ordinary, everyday activities.
Chris Prentiss
Nobody ever forgets where he buried a hatchet.
Kin Hubbard
...the majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former.
Theodore Roosevelt
Change leads to growth. Resistance leads to rigidity. Rigidity leads to ...
Gary Rohrmayer
If you keep your eye on the profit, you’re going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow.
Steve Jobs
Some Southerners effectively applied slave labor to the cultivation of corn, grain, and hemp (for making rope and twine), to mining and lumbering, to building canals and railroads, and even to the manufacture of textiles, iron, and other industrial products. Nevertheless, no other American region contained so many white farmers who merely subsisted on their own produce. The “typical” white Southerner was not a slaveholding planter but a small farmer who tried, often without success, to achieve both relative self-sufficiency and a steady income from marketable cash crops.
David Brion Davis
If we are to have our prayers answered, we must give God the glory.
Billy Graham
Creation is messy. You want genius, you get madness; two sides of the same coin.
Steve Jobs
But what if I don't believe in God? It's like they've sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can't will feeling. What Jack says issues from some still, true place that could not be extinguished by all the schizophrenia his genetic code could muster. It sounds something like this. Get on your knees and find some quiet space inside yourself, a little sunshine right about here. Jack holds his hands in a ball shape about midchest, saying, Let go. Surrender, Dorothy, the witch wrote in the sky. Surrender, Mary. I want to surrender but have no idea what that means. He goes on with a level gaze and a steady tone: Yield up what scares you. Yield up what makes you want to scream and cry. Enter into that quiet. It's a cathedral. It's an empty football stadium with all the lights on. And pray to be an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is conflict, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair hope... What if I get no answer there? If God hasn't spoken, do nothing. Fulfill the contract you entered into at the box factory, amen. Make the containers you promised to tape and staple. Go quietly and shine. Wait. Those not impelled to act must remain in the cathedral. Don't be lonely. I get so lonely sometimes, I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger ...
Mary Karr
When she heard about Mitch, it was Roberta that talked me into making the pizza.“You have to!” she’d nearly shrieked. She did this because I’d waxed on perhaps a little too enthusiastically about Mitch’s looks, his warm smile and his neighborly behavior.I shook my head. “I don’t know. He freaks me out.”“Yeah, I get that. Johnny Depp came in and fixed my faucet then told me he wanted to try my pizza that would freak me out too. But I’d still make him my freaking pizza.
Kristen Ashley
Cupping her chin, he said, "Sexiest female I've ever seen."tOne side of her mouth turned up with a smile while her eyes twinkled. "Even gray and leathery?"t"Ever so bonny.
Lisa Carlisle
I hate parties.And a wedding is the biggest party of all.All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower.He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them.Then I have to greet them.
Sarah Ruhl
[She had] a gay adventuresome spirit that was never to die, though it led her into curious places and she often found, at the end, only a trackless waste from which she had to retrace her steps painfully. But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.
Edna Ferber
Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.
Laini Taylor
It felt as if I’d been teleported to the dark side of the moon, forced to gaze out at the stars and wonder which one I’d come from.
Heather Heffner
Clinical psychology tells us arguably that trauma is the ultimate killer.Memories r not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics. they can be lost forever. It’s sort of like my past is an unfinished painting and as the artist of that painting,I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again.
Lady Gaga
Risk is the unique path to success.
Adria J. Cimino
What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is passed on by their parents’ egos and other social stimuli. It is born of negativity—of not being good enough thoughts of not having enough, of fear, and worry of failure. Because of its insecure nature, the ego loves to dominate and control others. It’s control or be controlled.
Marco Raye
It's never the differences between people that surprise us. It's the things that, against all odds, we have in common.
Jodi Picoult
That’s us,” he said. “Those five nuts right there.”Which one is me?” I asked.The little deformed one,” Zoe suggested.Oh, shut up.
Rick Riordan
I was too smart and that made people uncomfortable--most folks where we've lived our whole lives don't trust too much intelligence in a woman. There is also the problem of my eyes--they don't hide anything. If I don't care for a person, my eyes make it plain. I don't care for most. Folks are generally comfortable with the small lies they tell each other. They don't know what to do with someone like me, who mostly doesn't bother with small lies.
Roxane Gay
She knew it wasn't real. She knew the holograph wouldn't hurt. But she also knew that fire was dangerous, and illusions were dangerous, and being tricked into believing things that weren't real was often the most dangerous thing of all.
Marissa Meyer
I don’t like boys.”I shook my head. “That’s no impediment to them. Madame raised gentlemen of both sexes.
Ada Palmer
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others
Martha Graham
But that's one way we can identify the devil's voice: It always plays to our fears. It is the voice that tells us we must do something to prove who we are, to prove that we're worthy, to prove that we are who God has already declared us to be. When we know we are loved by God, we don't have to prove anything to anyone. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves more beloved than we are.
Jonathan Martin
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
Albert Einstein
People will come and go from your life for all kinds of acceptable and crappy reasons…So you’ve got to be your own best friend, know who you are, and never let anyone tell you you’re something you know you’re not.
Mia March
It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula K Le Guin
Miranda looked up at him through a haze of desire, her will consumed by a fierce crackling heat, just like the dry twigs of the old woman's fire.
Anya Seton
The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin
Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn't the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain...Try living for someone. Through it all-good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That's the hard thing.
Karen Marie Moning
It's probably not easy for a woman to understand what it's like to be a man. Imagine you're starving, and someone puts a huge buffet in front of you. There's delicious, mouth-watering food all around you, and it's really really hard not to eat it all. That's what it's like to be a man around attractive women. The urge to want to hump everything that moves is part of a man's natural programming. It's a deep-seated hunger. To suppress that hunger takes civilization and a lot of willpower.
Oliver Markus
Your silence creates a vacuum for others to fill The key is to stay present and keep listening. The silence of holding steady is different from the silence of holding back.
Ronald A. Heifetz
All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.
William Carlos Williams
Remember that your attitude towards life determines life’s attitude toward you. At any moment, you can choose to change everything for the better.
Susan C.Young
I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.
Robin Hobb