Quotes by American Authors - Page 2515

In life, there is always something to feel wonderful about.
Debasish Mridha
Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.
Lauren Oliver
Once you figure out who you are and what you love about yourself, I think it all kind of falls into place.
Jennifer Aniston
It was entirely taken for granted that there wasn't any lying in our family, and I was advanced in adolescence before I realized that in plenty of homes where I played with schoolmates, and went to their parties, children lied to their parents and parents lied to their children and to each other. It took me a long time to realize that these very same everyday lies, and the stratagems and jokes and tricks and dares that went with them, were in fact the basis of the scenes I so well loved to hear about and hoped for and treasured in the conversation of adults. My instinct - the dramatic instinct - was to lead me, eventually, on the right track for a storyteller: the scene was full of hints, pointers, suggestions, and promises of things to find out and know about human beings.I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken - and to know a truth, I also had to recognize a lie.
Eudora Welty
Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It happens the world over - we love ourselves more than we do the one we say we love. We all want to be Number One, we've got to be Number One or nothing! We can't see that we could make ourselves loved and needed in the Number Two, or Three, or Four spot. No sir, we've got to be Number One, and if we can't make it, we'll rip and tear at the loved one till we've ruined every smidgin of love that was ever there.
Irene Hunt
I think it takes much greater courage to create things to be gone than to create things that will remain
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff
You need to be clever to best him. Are you clever, Rach
Kim Harrison
I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested--'But these impulses may be from below, not from above.' I replied, 'They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live them from the devil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
True Love is a spiritual force that binds two hearts, and two souls, together as one.
Ellen J. Barrier
Today, over 50 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States have a diagnosed mental illness, a rate nearly five times greater than that of the general adult population. Nearly one in five prison and jail inmates has a serious mental illness. In fact, there are more than three times the number of seriously mentally ill individuals in jail or prison than in hospitals; in some states that number is ten times. And prison is a terrible place for someone with mental illness or a neurological disorder that prison guards are not trained to understand.
Bryan Stevenson
What self-acceptance does is open up more possibilities of succeeding because you aren't fighting yourself along the way.
Shannon Ables
Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.
David Sedaris
I am both numb and oversensitive, overwhelmed by the need, the raw and desperate need of the girls I am listening to and trying to help. I'm overdosing on the trauma of others, while still barely healing from my own.I cry for hour at home and have fitful nights of little sleep. My nightmares resurface as my own pain is repeated to me, magnified a thousand times. It feels insurmountable. How can you save everyone? How can you rescue them? How do you get over your pain? How do you ever feel normal?
Rachel Lloyd
I'm eating' it quick... but I'll remember it a long time.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
It is easy to become disillusioned with the circumstances of our lives compared to others'. But in the presence of God, He gives us a deeper peace and joy that transcends it all.
Francis Chan
Oftentimes at Yale, I'll be sitting around studying or drinking or hanging out when I'll hear one of my friends talk about a project they're doing for a class or a rally they're organizing or a play they're putting on. And I'll just think, really, honestly, how remarkably privileged we are to hang around with such a talented group of people around here. I am constantly reminded of the immense passion and creativity of those with whom I get to spend time every day.
Marina Keegan
It is amazing how your life changes when you embrace the reality that you're better than the life you've settled for.
Steve Maraboli
A gardin is where you can find a whole spectrum of life, birth and death
Tiffany Baker
Heroes didn't win. The heroes were whoever happened to win. History told their story -- the dead didn't say a word. All of it was bullshit.
Hugh Howey
Home. the word always had air quotes around it in her mind. She'd done what she could to make her flat cozy, filling it with art, books, ornate lanterns, and a Persian carpet as soft as lynx fur. And of course there were her angel wings taking up one whole wall. But there was no help for the real emptiness; its close air was stirred by no breath but her own. When she was alone, the empty place within her, the missingness, as she thought of it, seemed to swell. Even being with Kaz had done something to keep it at bay, though not enough. Never enough.
Laini Taylor
Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light.
Regina Spektor
Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.
Anne Lamott
Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.
Mitch Albom
Nothing is so common as unsuccessful men with talent. They lack only determination.
Charles Swindoll
You know, when people who were once religious no longer believe in God, they never really change; they just go on, hunting for the ecstatic food, trying to satisfy that hunger.
Andrew Holleran
Every day we are offered new means for learning and growing in love.
Leo Buscaglia
I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.
Louisa May Alcott
I can't die yet, honey. I haven't finished counting the stars and don't you know, my darling girl, that you will never be alone, because there is always love, and love lives forever.
Barbara Freethy
I go back for seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths, when it’s good. Just not if it means some guy gets to put a leash on me.
Paula Stokes
Sometimes, for revenge to be as sweet and painful as it is intended, some time has to pass. Time enough that people have forgotten about past hurts and humiliations. Time enough to make the poison of bitterness consume a soul. It was to be that time...Two worlds collide and find a common link. A plan was made, a price was paid and revenge was set in motion.
Elizabeth Bourgeret
Risin up, when you’re weak, makes a person stronger. By standin, thery’re saying that [she] matters, and they matter too. I feel better when I think about how showin respect to one person makes every person makes every person worth more.
Todd Johnson
Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.
Louise Erdrich
I'm 20 years old. I spend my days in a dictionary and half my mind in Fantasy.
Almney King
Life is a journey, education is our pleasure and our memory.
Debasish Mridha
No one knows very much about the life of another. This ignorance becomes vivid, if you love another. Love sets the imagination on fire, and, also, eventually, chars the imagination into a harder element: imagination cannot match love, cannot plunge so deep, or range so wide.
James Baldwin
Don’t blame others. it won’t make you a better person.
Lolly Daskal
Singing in the rain. I'm singing in the rain. And it's such a fucking glorious feeling.
David Levithan
Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything depended upon man.
Francis Cardinal Spellman
True beauty is a warm heart, a kind soul, and an attentive ear.
Ken Poirot
Secretly we fear ourselves, not the fear itself.
Debasish Mridha
Look," I said, "We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn't a surprise, it's what's supposed to happen. It's what we wanted. Right?""Is it?" he asked. "Is it what you want?"Whether he intended it to be or not, this was the final question, the last Truth. If I said what I really thought, I was opening myself up for a hurt bigger than I could even imagine. I didn't have it in me. We changed and altered so many rules, but it was this one, the only one when we'd started, that I would break."Yes," I said.
Sarah Dessen
Often we have to remind our minds that the job of asshole is already taken.
Scott Stabile
I think this power of living in our children is one of the sweetest things in the world…
Louisa May Alcott
We ran on the fuel of youth and hormones and ignorant arrogance, imagining we had the whole world and the workings thereof figured out.
Gwenn Wright
[Multitudes] have never been born again. They will go into eternity lost—while thinking they are saved because they belong to the church, or were baptized.
Billy Graham
I never truckled. I never took off the hat to Fashion and held it out for pennies. I told them the truth. They liked it or they didn't like it. What had that to do with me? I told them the truth.
Frank Norris
I wasn’t a class clown, because my parents were very strict and because nuns in general have no sense of humor. I mean zero, zip, nada. I wasted some of my best stuff on those old hags! Look at these knuckles - those are ruler marks, and they’re still visible all these years later. But I could usually get out of trouble at home if I could get my mom laughing. That’s a huge ace up your sleeve as a kid.
Dan Alatorre
When you want to talk about honor, they want to talk about money. When you want to talk about money, they want to talk about gentility. They either get the notion of honor or they don't. And if they don't, you probably shouldn't be fucking with them.
Liam Rector
I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.
Victoria Claflin Woodhull
Let me begin again as a speckof dust caught in the night windssweeping out to sea. Let me beginthis time knowing the world issalt water and dark clouds, the worldis grinding and sighing all night, and dawncomes slowly, and changes nothing.
Philip Levine
[My study of the universe] leaves little doubt that life has occurred on other planets. I doubt if the human race is the most intelligent form of life.
Harold Urey
The more you will able to trust yourself, the more joy and peace you will able to experience.
Debasish Mridha
Toleration is good for all or it is good for none.
Daniel Stashower
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
Thomas Sowell
To write only according to the rules laid down by masterpieces signifies that one is not a master but a pupil.
David Shields
The sun, moon, and stars God gave to the world, but He embedded their glories in your countenance just for me. Woven in your hair are the sun's shimmering golden rays. From your face glows the pale luminescence of the moon. And in your eyes God sprinkled a million stars to twinkle against a backdrop of endless night. You are my celestial light.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Diogenes carried a bowl with him for years, but one day saw a man drinking from his cupped palm and declared, ‘I have been a fool, burdened all these years by the weight of a bowl when a perfectly good vessel lay at the end of my wrist.
Christopher Moore
In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Eternity is a ham and two people” (also given as “Eternity is two people and a ham") is an old quip from the days when a ham was huge—far more than two people could finish. Irma Rombauer mentions this line in her famous cookbook, The Joy of Cooking.
Dorothy Parker