Quotes by American Authors - Page 2545

Great. Men affectionately attacked me with sticks to show their admiration.
Katherine Pine
I've always liked the moonless night best. It's easier to say things in the dark. It's easier to be yourself.
Patrick Rothfuss
If I close my eyes, plug my ears, and hold my tongue, all of this will cease to exist. I can pretend it never happened. No one will blame me if I choose to shove these memories into the back of my mind.
Leigh Hershkovich
With God, a mountain before me is soon to be a memory behind me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I am beginning to realize, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, that one of the problems I have in life is a tendency to completely romanticize how things will be in the future, which inevitably leads to disappointment because it's pretty much never, never, what I expect
Jane Green
The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art.
Henry David Thoreau
Words have the power to change us." - Tessa Gray
Cassandra Clare
Before one may scare the plain people one must first have a firm understanding of the bugaboos that most facilely alarm them. One must study the schemes that have served to do it in the past, and one must study very carefully the technic of the chief current professionals.
H.L. Mencken
Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room...An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter--extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone--beauty is born.
Geoffrey O'Brien
My love flew over the boundary of time with incredible beauty and notorious rhyme.
Debasish Mridha
Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class.
Robert M. Pirsig
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Duke Ellington
Don't wait until the fourth Thursday in November, to sit with family and friends to give thanks.Make every day a day of Thanksgiving!
Charmaine J.Forde
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.
Mark Twain
I kiss her long and deep and hard until I feel like I’m running on the fringes of my emotions; they’re tearing away at me like hands in Hell reaching out for me as I leap over the flames, trying to pull me down with them into sin, and as hard as I try to get away, a part of me wants them to take me. I want to sin. I want to kiss her.And so I do.And I don’t stop.
J.A. Redmerski
I believe that when you step into uncharted territory, you are also stepping into total abandonment, potential humiliation, and a space where nothing is guaranteed; there’s no case study or roadmap. I have so much respect for anybody who will step away from what they can do in order to find what they must do. That’s a hallmark characteristic of entrepreneurs and artists. And it’s scary and exciting as all hell.
Elle Luna
Dear Bill (O'Reilly)...I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!
Roger Ebert
What we do for each other before marriage is no indication of what we will do after marriage.
Gary Chapman
That's good. And speaking of spelling, tell me -- do you wrap your head in a towel after you shower?
Nicholas Sparks
For those of you who think that I have my life altogether, I definitely do not. Every season brings new challenges. For example, since I had my fifth child, I am notoriously 5-10 minutes late everywhere no matter how hard I try to be on time. I would like to say that I am "fashionably" late, but that isn't the truth either. Running in a mad dash in a parking lot (all holding hands of course) to make it somewhere 5 minutes late (instead of 6 minutes cause that makes a big difference) while one child is missing shoes and my hair is going in every direction. Yep, that is my family.
Tamara L. Chilver
You're into her. You're into the girl we came here to kill.
Stacey O'Neale
Oh," she said. "I wasn't going to ask, but then you never said anything about it, so I thought I'd ask.""How about you?""Not me," said Odette. She had a poem about marriage. It began, Marriage is the death you want to die, and in front of audiences she never read it with much conviction. Usually she swung her foot back and forth through the whole thing.
Lorrie Moore
Where the Depression years had aroused a deep sense of concern over how American wealth was distributed and American society structured, the successive crises of the 1960s and early 1970s, by highlighting the contradiction between the destructive capability of American technology and the moral opaqueness of those Americans who had ultimate control over its use, raised questions about the very course of “modern” historical development. After Vietnam, there could be no more easy assumptions about the goodness of American power, no more easy equating of being “modern” with being “civilized.
Paul A. Cohen
c.t“So, hunny, don’t waste your time trying to label or define me…’cause I’m not what I was ten years ago or ten minutes ago. I’m all of that and then some. And whereas I can’t live inside yesterday’s pain, I can’t live without it.
George C. Wolfe
Be careful not to censor yourself to fit a certain situation or group of people. When we start to censor ourselves we can easily censor ourselves right out of our lives
Renae A.Sauter
The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.
Jonathan Franzen
Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"..."It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended. When each individual realises for himself that this thing primarily stands for and should only be accepted as a moral due - that it should be paid out as honestly stored energy, and not as a usurped privilege - many of our social, religious, and political troubles will have permanently passed. As for Carrie, her understanding of the moral significance of money was the popular understanding, nothing more. The old definition: 'Money: something everybody else has and I must get,' would have expressed her understanding of it thoroughly. Some of it she now held in her hand - two soft, green ten-dollar bills - and she felt that she was immensely better off for the having of them. It was something that was power in itself. One of her order of mind would have been content to be cast away upon a desert island with a bundle of money, and only the long strain of starvation would have taught her that in some cases it could have no value. Even then she would have had no conception of the relative value of the thing; her one thought would, undoubtedly, have concerned the pity of having so much power and the inability to use it.
Theodore Dreiser
Absolute freedom comes when we make the choice to wake up and master our individual minds, bodies, hearts, and spirits. When we have this true freedom, we no longer act upon our impulsive thoughts or emotions. We gain the capability of controlling them within ourselves, which unlocks our greatest potential to create, transmute, and transcend the Mundane reality.
Alaric Hutchinson
On the fifth day, they told my parents I was on the bottom of the chart, and there was nothing else they could do.
Amy Rankin
The simple truth is, not every fight can be won.
Elyn R. Saks
All experienced murderers seek cover. By putting the Agency’s fingerprints on [Mafia] operations, the mob could anticipate that the CIA would [be forced to] cooperate in the cover-up of crucial information related to JFK's assassination
Lamar Waldron
The fearful have lost faith while the fearless allow faith to lead the way.
Bryant McGill
What made a movie buff different from others was the amount of freakish details they chose to fill their heads with. The typical movie-goer remembered the big lines, the ones that you could find on the film’s shirts and posters. Just a bunch of tag-lines used for promotion. A true movie buff memorized the odd ones that said more about the story’s theme or characters. A true buff read up on the movie’s history.
Kenya Wright
All pre-Abrahamic cultures understood the tremendous importance of remaining closely connected to the past if the present was to be invested with any spiritually significant meaning. They also understood that the most personally relevant and accessible portal to the empowering wisdom and goodness of the past was through their own direct ancestors, those who shared their particular bloodline and DNA. It was for this reason that all traditional cultures engaged in what is often called ancestor worship (pitri-puja). There is no pre-Abrahamic culture on Earth that did not honor its ancestors in one form or another. This is a very important spiritual practice and tradition that used to be practiced universally by families in the ancient past. The process of ancestor worship now needs to be revived in the modern world if we are to not lose our sacred connection with our own cultural-spiritual heritage. Ancestor worship must become a regular practice again.
Dharma Pravartaka Acharya
Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. The purchase of a book or pamphlet today may result in a subpoena tomorrow. Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. When the light of publicity may reach any student, any teacher, inquiry will be discouraged. The books and pamphlets that are critical of the administration, that preach an unpopular policy in domestic or foreign affairs, that are in disrepute in the orthodox school of thought will be suspect and subject to investigation. The press and its readers will pay a heavy price in harassment. But that will be minor in comparison with the menace of the shadow which government will cast over literature that does not follow the dominant party line. If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes of the land. Through the harassment of hearings, investigations, reports, and subpoenas government will hold a club over speech and over the p
William O. Douglas
He’s letting me see the real him, something he doesn’t allow a lot of people to see.
Collette West
Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin except to be there when he doesn't want her.
Helen Rowland
God don't give out certain.
Jeffery Deaver
He never bothered listening to sports; the bored him, every one of them.
Michael Finkel
At times, it almost felt like I was destined to take the trip, like all the people I met had somehow been waiting for me
Nicholas Sparks
The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I make the most of all that comes And the least of all that goes.
Sara Teasdale
To be mindful of social phenomena is thus to identify more clearly hatred, greed, and delusion as well as the seeds of wisdom and compassion both around us and in us. (p. 52)
Donald Rothberg
When you employ HUMOR, you create a friendly, relaxed buying atmosphere.
Jeffrey Gitomer
You're in the democratic West now, lady. Anybody's as good as anybody else as long as he's got the dough to prove it.
Leslie Ford
He kept thinking about Mary. What a fool he'd been to let her go. To think, with the thoughtless assurance of youth, that the world was replete with endless possibilities. He'd thought it a mistake to choose so early in life and embrace the present good. He'd been a great one for looking for greener pastures. He'd kept looking until all his pastures were brown with time. ("Old Haunts")
Richard Matheson
Did you recently turn into a jerk or have you been one since birth?
Priya Ardis
As when astronaut Mike Mulhane was asked by a NASA psychiatrist what epitaph he'd like to have on his gravestone, Mulhane answered, "A loving husband and devoted father," though in reality, he jokes in "Riding Rockets," "I would have sold my wife and children into slavery for a ride into space.
Mary Roach
May you live in peace today and forever.
Debasish Mridha
She's absolutely beautiful. Her hope is beautiful. The smile on her face is beautiful. The tears streaming down her cheeks are beautiful.Herloveisbeautiful.
Colleen Hoover
Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people.
Jared Diamond
Saints and bodhisattvas may achieve what Christians call mystical union or Buddhists call satori--a perpetual awareness of the force at the heart of the heart of things. For these enlightened few, the world is always lit. For the rest of us, such clarity comes only fitfully, in sudden glimpses or slow revelations. Quakers refer to these insights as openings. When I first heard the term from a Friend who was counseling me about my resistance to the Vietnam War, I though of how on an overcast day, sunlight pours through a break in the clouds. After the clouds drift on, eclipsing the sun, the sun keeps shining behind the veil, and the memory of its light shines on in the mind.
Scott Russell Sanders
People will always believe what they want to believe, about you. This is due to the fact that people wish to create their own truths; anything but the truth that's real. My creed is simple: Let them! Their beliefs don't alter your truth. Moreover, your attempt at altering them won't do any good for you.
C. JoyBell C.
Call me later, you’d said, so I could call you later, at night, and it is those nights I miss you, Ed, the most, on the phone, you beautiful bastard.
Daniel Handler
When I was younger I was attracted to gay guys and they were "attracted" to me. I don't exactly know why...But it turned out the gay guys were the ones holding all the cards, both physically and emotionally, and I've certainly paid the price for making that mistake. And so have all of the guys I've dated since.
Hilary Winston
Before the Wright brothers flew, flying was fantasy. Before the civil rights movement, people getting along together and the races being equal was a fantasy. Things change because we imagine a different world, a world that is not. And I think that imagination is one of the most important and defining aspects of human existence: our ability to imagine a world that is not.
Brandon Sanderson
Every person fails, nobody achieves everything that he or she set out to achieve. Nobody, regardless of how many personal triumphs they enjoy, no matter how rich or powerful they become, goes through life without encountering failure. You cannot fail unless a person valiantly tries to accomplish a task. The most audacious person readily attempts difficult projects, despite feeling uncertain if they can prevail. Successful people exhibit the character to respond positively to failure. Some failures prove instrumental in altering a person’s outlook, and their revised perspective leads to brilliant successes
Kilroy J. Oldster
My name is Zia Rashid.
Rick Riordan
Introduce Yourself. Being confident and outgoing will empower you to approach new people who might be reluctant to take the first step. It is amazing how many people we come in contact with yet pass like ships in the night without any engagement or connection.
Susan C.Young