Quotes by American Authors - Page 2565

She saw clearly a boy and a man fighting for control of the same face.
Stephen King
I've yet to find another soul who believes in me with the same fervency as my mother.
Richelle E. Goodrich
To be ignorant is to waste the talents you were born with. To be ignorant is to confine your life to a path no different than the generations before you
Linda Cardillo
If you don’t know history,you don’t know anything.”Edward Johnston
Richard Puz
We describe a person without compassion as “heartless,” and we urge him or her to “have a heart.” Our deepest hurts we call “heartaches.” Jilted lovers are “brokenhearted.” Courageous soldiers are “bravehearted.” The truly evil are “black-hearted” and saints have “hearts of gold.” If we need to speak at the most intimate level, we ask for a “heart-to-heart” talk. “Lighthearted” is how we feel on vacation. And when we love someone as truly as we may, we love “with all our heart.” But when we lose our passion for life, when a deadness sets in which we cannot...
John Eldredge
I primarily use poetry as a purge, a self-medication device when I’m in the depths of loneliness, anxiety or in the throes of depression. When I’m lost in the darkness of mental illness, I spill forth a deluge of words and prose that are oftentimes grim, dark and depressive. And when my poems are spilled forth into one of my poetry journals, I feel a weight has been indeed been lifted from me, and my mind can rest just a bit easier.
Nicholas Trandahl
Not reading poetry amounts to a national pastime here.
Phyllis McGinley
I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve come to learn that predictions don’t mean much. Too much lies outside the realm of medical knowledge. A lot of what happens next comes down to you and your specific genetics, your attitude. No, there’s nothing we can do to stop the inevitable, but that’s not the point. The point is that you should try to make the most of the time you have left.
Nicholas Sparks
You have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.
Louise L. Hay
Things might not be great, but things would be okay.
Gillian Flynn
Tavin cupped his hands to his mouth. “Here, dragon-dragon-dragon!” he yelled.Lily stared in amazement. Well, that was bold, she thought, and stupid.
Richard Due
In all human cultures, the social world has two clear dimensions: a horizontal dimension of closeness or liking, and a vertical one of hierarchy or status. . . . Now imagine yourself happily moving around your two-dimensional social world, a flat land where the X axis is closeness and the Y axis is hierarchy. Then one day, you see a person do something extraordinary, or you have an overwhelming experience of natural beauty , and you feel lifted “up.” But it is not the “up” of hierarchy, it’s some other kind of elevation. This chapter is about that vertical movement. My claim is that the human mind perceives a third dimension, a specifically moral dimension that I will call “divinity.
Jonathan Haidt
Love drips like honey from the hive, constant, sweet, precious, into your heart each and every moment if you let it.
Amy Leigh Mercree
The world is full of talkers, but it is rare to find anyone who listens. And I assure you that you can pick up more information when you are listening than when you are talking.
E B White
No worries and no goodbyes, just give me a smile.
David Rangel
I remember a cartoon depicting a chimney sweep falling from the roof of a tall building and noticing on the way that a signboard had one word spelled wrong, and wondering in his headlong flight why nobody had thought of correcting it. In a sense, we all are crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall. This capacity to wonder at trifles—no matter the imminent peril—these asides of the spirit, these footnotes in the volume of life are the highest forms of consciousness, and it is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from common sense and its logic, that we know the world to be good.
Vladimir Nabokov
The heads of strong old age are beautiful / Beyond all grace of youth
Robinson Jeffers
Even though we don't know which companies the NSA has compromised – or by what means – knowing that they could have compromised any of them is enough to make us mistrustful of all of them. This is going to make it hard for large companies like Google and Microsoft to get back the trust they lost. Even if they succeed in limiting government surveillance. Even if they succeed in improving their own internal security. The best they'll be able to say is: "We have secured ourselves from the NSA, except for the parts that we either don't know about or can't talk about.
Bruce Schneier
Not having a specified launch plan and process is one of the biggest pitfalls in the technology market.
Brian Lawley
Act-act in the living present!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.
Steve Martin
Arab nationalism in its traditional form was the way in which secular Arab Christians like Edward had found and kept a place for themselves, while simultaneously avoiding the charge of being too 'Western.' It was very noticeable among the Palestinians that the most demonstrably 'extreme' nationalists—and Marxists—were often from Christian backgrounds. George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh used to be celebrated examples of this phenomenon, long before anyone had heard of the cadres of Hamas, or Islamic Jihad. There was an element of overcompensation involved, or so I came to suspect.
Christopher Hitchens
One of the most important things to do in a church that wants to nurture and administrate prophetic ministry is to dial down the mysticism and the carnal desire to look superspiritual. We need to keep our eyes off people and remain focused on Jesus and His purpose for us.
Mike Bickle
But he wanted to leap up, to say to her, I have been sick and I found out then, only then, how lonely I am. Is it too late? My heart puts up a struggle inside me, and you may have heard it, protesting against emptiness...It should be full, he would rush on to tell her, thinking of his heart now as a deep lake, it should be holding love like other hearts. It should be flooded with love. There would be a warm spring day...Come and stand in my heart, whoever you are, and a whole river would cover your feet and rise higher and take your knees in whirlpools, and draw you down to itself, your whole body, your heart too.("Death of a Traveling Salesman")
Eudora Welty
To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master's will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness.
Frederick Douglass
Think of only three things: your God your family and the Green Bay Packers-in that order.
Vince Lombardi
Never fuck anyone you wouldn't want to be.
Kate Bornstein
Hush Hattie!" I said, intoxicated with my success. "I don't want to go to my room. Everyone must know I shan't marry the prince." I ran to the door to our street, opened it, and called out into the night, "I shan't marry the prince." I turned back into the hall and ran to Char and threw my arms about his neck. "I shan't marry you." I kissed his cheek. He was safe from me.
Gail Carson Levine
Even from high above, I could feel Amanda's hate. Or perhaps it was another dimension of my Shadow, my own hate for her closing in on me. Despite all I had learned and seen, I wished to God someone would choke her to death so I could get ahold of her and choke her some more.
Christopher Pike
Even when I knew people were cheating me, what was important was how I behaved, because I have to answer to God. I can't be responsible for other people's actions: They will have to answer to God themselves
Muhammad Ali
They were not creating a mess. They were just slowly illuminating it.
Maggie Stiefvater
Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerves give to wisdom.
Elbert Hubbard
I like writing that puts the needle right into the vein. I don’t think, when I’m writing, “Tell a good story” or “find a meaning.” I’m thinking phrase by phrase, make it tight, make it good. Get the idea out in language I can bear. I think there’s something musical about being impatient with boring sentences—it’s not that I don’t have boring sentences, God knows I do, but I’m impatient with them.
Maggie Nelson
You get out of hell one step at a time." -- Abbie Sullivan, "Cinderella Shoots the Moon.
Arlie Corday
Writing is beautiful, like putting on a gold suit and going to sleep in it.
Mark Leidner
It doesn't matter what story we're telling, we're telling the story of family.
Erica Lorraine Scheidt
You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing.
Stella Adler
All who hear are called. All who are called are able.
Chuck Black
When it comes to purpose and preparation, most of us want to skip the preparation part and get right to purpose, which is why we don't always get to truly enjoy and walk in our purpose. Don't despise the discomfort in preparation. It's the set-up for a firm foundation. Preparation ultimately ensures that we don't squander purpose.
Andrena Sawyer
While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
Dorothea Lange
Perpetual Optimism is a Force Multiplier.
Colin Powell
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
Henry David Thoreau
... an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
Herman Melville
But isn't it time for Christians to admit that we should reject bargains if they are gained by the exploitation of the poorest of the poor in developing countries?
Tony Campolo
Balance and fullness exists in the polarity of all things.
Bryant McGill
At this point we can finally see what's really at stake in our peculiar habit of defining ourselves simultaneously as master and slave, reduplicating the most brutal aspects of the ancient household in our very concept of ourselves, as masters of our freedoms, or as owners of our very selves. It is the only way that we can imagine ourselves as completely isolated beings. There is a direct line from the new Roman conception of liberty – not as the ability to form mutual relationships with others, but as the kind of absolute power of "use and abuse" over the conquered chattel who make up the bulk of a wealthy Roman man's household – to the strange fantasies of liberal philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Smith, about the origins of human society in some collection of thirty- or forty-year-old males who seem to have sprung from the earth fully formed, then have to decide whether to kill each other or begin to swap beaver pelts.
David Graeber
It won’t be disagreeable,” he said. “It can be made quite enjoyable.”“Oh, it had better be,” she said tartly. “I’ve heard plenty over the years on your amatory prowess. If I’m not on the roof crowing, I will consider myself disappointed.
Sherry Thomas
A happy and productive person is one who understands that his or her job is not the purpose of his or her life. Go on vacation, use up your sick days, ask for a temporary leave-of-absence—anything that allows you to recharge your batteries away from your typical routine. No leave, no life.
Del Suggs
What I can tell you is DO IT. Publish book one and get book two out as soon as possible. There are very few Harper Lee’s. Most of us are going to have to write a few books to get good at it.
Dan Alatorre
Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts.
Abel Stevens
Laziness is not particularly terrible or wonderful. Rather it has a basic living quality that deserves to be experienced just as it is. Perhaps we’ll find an irritating, pulsating quality in laziness. We might feel it as dull and heavy or as vulnerable and raw. Whatever we discover, as we explore it further, we find nothing to hold on to, nothing solid, only groundless, wakeful energy. This process of experiencing laziness directly and nonverbally is transformative. It unlocks a tremendous energy that is usually blocked by our habit of running away. This is because when we stop resisting laziness, our identity as the one who is lazy begins to fall apart completely. Without the blinders of ego, we connect with a fresh outlook, a greater vision. This is how laziness—or any other demon—introduces us to the compassionate life.
Pema Chödrön
As one might gather from a painting of him scowling in a tall stovepipe hat, Day saw himself as a businessman, not a journalist. ''He needed a newspaper not to reform, not to arouse, but to push the printing business of Benjamin H. Day.''Day's idea was to try selling a paper for a penny - the going price for many everyday items, like soap or brushes. At that price, he felt sure he could capture a much larger audience than his 6-cent rivals. But what made the prospect risky, potentially even suicidal, was that Day would then be selling his paper at a loss. What day was contemplating was a break with the traditional strategy for making profit: selling at a price higher than the cost of production. He would instead rely on a different but historically significant business model: reselling the attention of his audience, or advertising. What Day understood-more firmly, more clearly than anyone before him-was that while his readers may have thought themselves his customers, they were in fact his product.
Tim Wu
I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don’t think it is years themselves, or the disintegration of the body. Most of our bodies are better taken care of and better-looking than ever. What it is, is what we know, now that in spite of ourselves we have stopped to think about it. It is not only that we know that love ends, children are stolen, parents die feeling that their lives have been meaningless. It is not only that, by this time, a lot of acquaintances and friends have died and all the others are getting ready to sooner or later. It is more that the barriers between the circumstances of oneself and of the rest of the world have broken down, after all—after all that schooling, all that care. Lord, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. But when you are thirty-three, or thirty-five, the cup must come around, cannot pass from you, and it is the same cup of pain that every mortal drinks from. Dana cried over Mrs. Hilton. My eyes filled during the nightly news. Obviously we were grieving for ourselves, but we were also thinking that if they were feeling what we were feeling, how could they stand it? We were grieving for them, too. I understand that later you come to an age of hope, or at least resignation. I suspect it takes a long time to get there.
Jane Smiley
I shall never be very merry or very sad, for I am more prone to analyse than to feel.
H.P. Lovecraft
Some say that time is like water that flows around us (like a stone in the river) and some say we flow with time (like a twig floating on the surface of the water).
Chuck Klosterman
He walked across the room and flicked a switch. A spotlight turned on, illuminating a laminated poster of a woman on his wall. He took a crayon from his pocket and began drawing on it. I could see smudges from past demonstrations. [. . .] His dashed lines crisscrossed the woman's chest as if he were planning a military maneuver on undulating terrain.
Kim van Alkemade
Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.
Robert K. Greenleaf
You will not be a success in every business, but if you don’t start a business you will never be a success.
Debasish Mridha
A bunch of Latinas at Pitzer College decided to let white girls know that they shouldn’t wear hoops anymore, because that’s appropriating a style.... I’ve never worn hoop earrings for the purpose of “feeling ethnic,” nor have I ever associated hoop earrings with a certain culture. They’ve always been an accessory I like. It’s really as simple as that....I can’t wear hoops because I didn’t “create the culture as a coping mechanism for marginalization”? I can’t wear hoops because I’m not a feminist? I can’t wear hoops because some Latinas can’t afford it? I can’t wear hoops because I refuse to buy into your hypersensitive BS?....Does anyone else realize how completely ridiculous that sounds?
Hannah Bleau
THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL...THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US.
John Irving