Quotes by American Authors - Page 2491

When we were together before, the world was small to us, but as you grew bigger to life and the world became desirous to living, we became smaller to each other.
Anthony Liccione
[T]he strongest defense of the humanities lies not in the appeal to their utility — that literature majors may find good jobs, that theaters may economically revitalize neighborhoods — but rather in the appeal to their defiantly nonutilitarian character, so that individuals can know more than how things work, and develop their powers of discernment and judgment, their competence in matters of truth and goodness and beauty, to equip themselves adequately for the choices and the crucibles of private and public life.
Leon Wieseltier
For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Marry your offline and online systems. So when you meet someone in person, make sure to connect with them online, too!
Lisa A. Mininni
Motivation 1.0 presumed that humans were biological creatures, struggling to obtain our basic needs for food, security and sex.Motivation 2.0 presumed that humans also responded to rewards and punishments. That worked fine for routine tasks but incompatible with how we organize what we do, how we think about what we do, and howwe do what we do. We need an upgrade. Motivation 3.0, the upgrade we now need, presumes that humans also have a drive to learn, to create, and to better the world.
Daniel H. Pink
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln
Satan’s first appearance in the Bible included an attack on a marriage—trying to divide Adam and Eve. His tactics have not changed. He wants our marriages to flounder and fail, because he knows that few things will discourage us more.
Billy Graham
Have you ever looked at, say, a picture or a great building or read a paragraph in a book and felt the world suddenly expand and, in the same instant, contract and harden into a kernel of perfect purity? Do you know what I mean? Everything suddenly fits, everything's in its place.
Carol Shields
how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
Amy Tan
Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.
Tennessee Williams
Sometimes the opposite of loss is loss.
Penelope Scambly Schott
What allows us as human beings to psychologically survive life on earth with all of its pain drama and challenges is a sense of purpose and meaning.
Barbara De Angelis
I have this feeling, like I'm waiting for something. But I have no idea what.
Jennifer Niven
It is the cry of the separate self, ‘What about me?’ As long as we keep acting from that place, it doesn’t matter who wins the war against (what they see as) evil. The world will not deviate from its death-spiral.
Charles Eisenstein
Hold up to him his better self his real self that can dare and do and win out. ... People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts.
Eleanor H. Porter
If [we] have a good, miserable day once in a while, or several in a row, stand steady and face them. Things will straighten out. There is great purpose in our struggle in life.
Boyd K. Packer
The world of literature is a sacred mirror that shows not the reality around us but the dreams and fears that reality stimulates: It’s not where we live, but life itself.
Dennis Vickers
...a freeze response (dissociation, collapse, numbing, paralysis, deadness) during the incident that threatened your life or limb. Sometimes it's difficult for people to understand that this is really survival response...
Babette Rothschild
Boredom or discontent is useful to me when I acknowledge it and see clearly my assumption that there's something else I would rather be doing. In this way boredom can act as an invitation to freedom by opening me to new options and thoughts. For example, if I can't change the activity, can I look at it more honestly?
Hugh Prather
They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that's not how it happened for me.
Lauren Oliver
Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with.
Jeffrey Eugenides
A true work of art is shaped by the hands of another, and if in shaping us that ‘other’ is anything other than God, the piece will never touch the remotest periphery of its potential.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Stephanie had been raped, beaten and left for dead on the Atlantic City Boardwalk several times. You'd think she would have hit rock bottom after those experiences. But no. None of that made her quit. It just made her want to use even more drugs, to forget her miserable life. As long as she could get high, she didn't care if she was being raped in a dark alley. At this point in her life, a lethal overdose probably would have felt like her salvation.
Oliver Markus
Unnecessary violence against animals is a heinous crime. Be a voice for those who do not have one.
Debasish Mridha
And George Farr had the town, the earth, the world to himself and his sorrow. Music came faint as a troubling rumor beneath the spring night, sweetened by distance: a longing knowing no ease. (Oh God, oh God!) At last George Farr gave up trying to see her. He had 'phoned vainly and time after time, at last the telephone became the end in place of the means: he had forgotten why he wanted to reach her. Finally he told himself that he hated her, that he would go away; finally he was going to as much pains to avoid her as he had been to see her. So he slunk about the streets like a criminal, avoiding her, feeling his his very heart stop when he did occasionally see her unmistakable body from a distance. And at night he lay sleepless and writhing to think of her, then to rise and don a few garments and walk past her darkened house, gazing in slow misery at the room in which he knew she lay, soft and warm, in intimate slumber, then to return to home and bed to dream of her brokenly.
William Faulkner
That’s what brave is, you know. Doing what needs to be done when you’re scared shitless.
Jacqueline Rhoades
Acting can work a peculiar magic on the actor ... it can cure you (at least for the length of a performance) of a whole variety of ailments. Migraine headaches miserable colds or toothaches will suddenly disappear as you're up there going through your paces.
Barbara Harris
It was impossible not to fall in love with him.
C.J. English
With just a little drop of kindness you can water a whole garden.
Heather Wolf
I was hoping to find a way out of here and instead found you.
Nicki Elson
If you are going to find work worth doing - a vocation to fulfill and challenge you - you will have to encounter a reality bigger than yourself. It may not be what others say it should be or what you think, but it will come if you are looking for it... At times, the work you're called to do will be hard and confusing, but if you press in, you will see the purpose behind the pain. You will see how the whole experience is causing you to grow. And you will thank God for the whole journey.
Jeff Goins
Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that’s what makes it hard to see.
Robert M. Pirsig
To the people who are upset about their hard-earned tax money going to things they don’t like: welcome to the f*cking club. Reimburse me for the Iraq war and oil subsidies, and diaphragms are on me!
Jon Stewart
I always found in myself a dread of west and love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.
John Steinbeck
I'm afraid of life! There are times I--I am very frightened. Any happiness seems trivial. And yet, I wonder if it isn't all a misunderstanding-- this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain... If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could... get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It's the self that suffers, and there's a place where the self--ceases. I don't know how to say it. But I believe that the reality--the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness--that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.
Ursula K Le Guin
Their dad was the god of thieves, but they were about a stealthy as water buffalos.
Rick Riordan
You know what?” he whispered, out of breath, “You’re about to be in a whole lot of trouble. We probably better go.
Laney Smith
As I grow older part of my emotional survival plan must be to actively seek inspiration instead of passively waiting for it to find me.
Bebe Moore Campbell
If you never try, you'll never know. You are what you manifest.
Germany Kent
if you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values.
Dennis Prager
All my life, he said, I been witness to people showin up where they was supposed to be at various times after they'd said they'd be there. I never heard one yet that didnt have a reason for it.Yessir.But there aint but one reason.Yessir.You know what it is?No sir.It's that their word's no good. That's the only reason there ever was or ever will be.
Cormac McCarthy
There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I’m not saying we’ll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure. Take a chance, Jess. You’re already wondering if the world could change. Try imagining a world worth living in, and then ask yourself if that isn’t worth fighting for. You’ve come too far to give up on hope, Jess.
Leslie Feinberg
You’re as lovely as a flower in the stark of winter… Your hair is the color of wheat under the midday sun, and your eyes—”“Yes, yes. My eyes are like the sea or the sky or some such nonsense,” she quipped with a laugh, the lilting sound like the finest music, better than anything he could ever play.
Tamara Hughes
I felt a new wave of irritation, squelched it as I kicked into scientist mode. First rule: block mind-set. Don’t suspect, don’t fear, don’t hope for any outcome. Observe, weigh, measure, and record.Second rule: block emotion. Leave sorrow, pity, and outrage for later. Anger or grief can lead to error and misjudgment. Mistakes do your victim no good.
Kathy Reichs
Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.
JOHN C MAXWELL
Clay sat up, swinging a leg over Jeff's body to straddle him. He grabbed both wrists and pinned them by Jeff's head, bending closer until they shared a breath between parted lips. "There's something about you, Jeff. Always something.""I'm just an ordinary guy --" Jeff stopped when Clay shook his head vigorously."You're not. You're special.""Special how?""You taste good.
Catt Ford
Life has its ugliness and ups and downs, but look for the beauty and you will find it.
Debasish Mridha
Before Elijah could raise a nation from the dead, he raised just one dead child.
Lou Engle
Digital is the age of innovation because creativity is about connecting the dots in the wider scope.
Pearl Zhu
We must stop pointing to the exceptions—these bright shining stars who transcend circumstance. We must look to how we can best support the least among us, not spend all our time blindly revering and trying to mimic the greatest without demanding systemic change.
Roxane Gay
My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.
Francesca Lia Block
Instead of showing visibly distinct alternate identities, the typical DID patient presents a polysymptomatic mixture of dissociative and posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) symptoms that are embedded in a matrix of ostensibly non-trauma-related symptoms (e.g., depression, panic attacks, substance abuse,somatoform symptoms, eating-disordered symptoms). The prominence of these latter, highly familiar symptoms often leads clinicians to diagnose only these comorbid conditions. When this happens, the undiagnosed DID patient may undergo a long and frequently unsuccessful treatment for these other conditions.- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p5
James A. Chu
Exercise 1: Guarding the PrayerOnce we are performing the five obligatory prayers with regularity, then it is certainly worth our efforts to begin increasing extra prayers- especially the late-night prayers (tahajjud). Late-night prayer is one of the defining qualities of a salih (righteous) person, also called a wali (friend of Allah). Regarding late-night prayers, Fudayl b. 'Iyyad said that if a man was unable to do them, it was due to his wrong actions during the day. May Allah make us befitting to stand before Him, here and in the hereafter.Agenda to Change our Condition, Hamza Yusuf & Zaid Shakir, S. 46
Hamza Yusuf
Thank you for giving me another chance.""Thank you for deserving one.
Kiersten White
I don't like it when I outweigh my men.
Patricia Briggs
Go and find what it is that inspires you, go and find what it is that you love and go do that until it hurts. Don’t quit, and don’t give up. The reward is just around the corner. And in times of doubt or times of joy, listen for that still, small voice. Know that God has been there from the beginning—and he will be there until the End.
Chip & Joanna Gaines
In the end, life is about collecting experiences and looking for the lesson and blessing in each one. Yet we are never to carry these experiences on our backs, only in our hearts. One will hold us back, while the other will keep us moving forward.
Suzy Kassem
I can feel guilty about the past apprehensive about the future but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
Keep hope alive to be happy.
Debasish Mridha