Quotes by American Authors - Page 2609

Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured to Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: "How do we get there?"!
Anton Szandor LaVey
When he left us, he stole all the words.
Alex George
The answer to the problem of evil does not lie in trying to establish its point of origin, for that is simply not revealed to us. Rather, in the moment of the cross, it becomes clear that evil is utterly subverted for good.... If God can take the greatest of evils and turn them for the greatest of goods, then how much more can he take the lesser evils which litter human history, from individual tragedies to international disasters, and turn them to his good purpose as well.
Carl R. Trueman
We cannot simply forgive and forget, nor should we.
Sharon Salzberg
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
Randall Jarrell
There are as many ways to discover your story as there are to trip over a dog in the kitchen--and some of them feel about as planned.
Jeffrey A. Carver
Perhaps friendship doesn't divert sound judgment.
J.D. Tew
Maybe – let’s not rule it out – this will be the song that cuts clean, the one that matters, the one that sheds standard-issue romance and reveals, under its old skin, a raw blood-red devotion deeper than comfort, a desire profounder than schoolboy satisfaction, a yearning cold and immaculate and unstoppable as snow.
Michael Cunningham
At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she ever had been before. And why worry about defining everything?
Patricia Highsmith
We are aware that the order of God requires the exercise of humility, but not of servility of slaves; but a humility that can be associated with undoubted courage and unflinching integrity; at the same time there is no room for pride, self-sufficient pride, that rests solely upon its own capabilities, and refuses to look for the support and countenance of others.--MS 7:91 [MS is the Millenial Star]
John A. Widtsoe
Our answer, our opportunity, our chance to change the world has to come from the poetry that is already written on the walls of the soul.
Michael Meade
When we learn to relax and simply be present for the animal without judgment, we will find it much easier to connect with animals, and in turn, we will begin to see better responses from them.
Kathleen Prasad
The author relates George Bernard Shaw's sentiments that polite conversation excludes the only two subjects that matter, religion and politics.
Lyle Wesley Dorsett
Those times are over and gone, and good-riddance to them, too. We were hopelessly high-spirited. Now we're the thick-waisted generation, dragging along our children behind us and carrying our parents on our backs. And we're in charge, while the figures who used to command our respect are wasting away.
Gregory Maguire
At one moment, his eyes sparkled in the light and in the next they were enshrouded in shadow. What connected those bands of light and dark? Could they indeed have been distinct entities?
Ashim Shanker
There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.But sometimes it doesn't.Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.
Veronica Roth
Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation.
Barbara W. Tuchman
He tried to shape in his mind what he had to say to McDonald. It was a feeling; it was an urge that he had to speak. But whatever he spoke he knew would be but another name for the wildness that he sought. It was a freedom and goodness, a hope and a vigor that he perceived to underlie all the familiar things of his life, which were not free or good or hopeful or vigorous. What he sought was the source and preserver of his world, a world which seemed to turn ever in fear away from its source, rather than search it out, as the prairie grass around him sent down its fibered roots into the rich dark dampness, the Wildness, and thereby renewed itself, year after year.
John Williams
Everyone loses their class when they travel through hell, but only a few will regain it if they remain humble and accept the part they played in their own misery.
Shannon L. Alder
So you know what mean when I say that I don't think anyone who falls in love has a choice. You're just pulled to that person like true north, whether it's good for you or bound to break your heart.
Jodi Picoult
Boo and I walked up the steps to the porch. His fingers found the doorknob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, enter inside, and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again.
Harper Lee
If you think someone is AWESOME, tell them! The world NEEDS more of THAT!
Tanya Masse
Charity erodes the cultural prerequisites for a vigorous democracy.
Janet Poppendieck
Carroll was eleven years old when he saw The Haunting in The Oregon Theater. He had gone with his cousins, but when the lights went down, his companions were swallowed by the dark and Carroll found himself essentially alone, shut tight into his own suffocating cabinet of shadows. At times, it required all his will not to hide his eyes, yet his insides churned with a nervous-sick frisson of pleasure. When the lights finally came up, his nerve endings were ringing, as if he had for a moment grabbed a copper wire with live current in it. It was a sensation for which he had developed a compulsion.Later, when he was a professional and it was his business, his feelings were more muted - not gone, but experienced distantly, more like the memory of an emotion than the thing itself. More recently, even the memory had fled, and in its place was a deadening amnesia, a numb disinterest when he looked at the piles of magazines on his coffee table. Or no - he was overcome with dread, but the wrong kind of dread.("Best New Horror")
Joe Hill
When white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our “fault.” But it is undeniably our inheritance.
Douglas A. Blackmon
As you travel along the roads in life, there is a certain kind of peace that comes with knowing you're on the right path. And when you are faced with adversity, it challenges you but makes you stronger. The road is not always an easy route. Nevertheless, you must not allow your fears to keep you from reaching the destination.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Great fiction is the art of a soul.
Douglas Christiansen
I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.
Tom Clancy
My unreality is chiefly this: I have never felt much like a human being. It's a splendid feeling.
Margaret Anderson
Assassination is an art, milord, and I am the city’s most accomplished artist - Durzo Blint
Brent Weeks
Self-distrust is the cause of most of our failures. They are the weakest however strong who have no faith in themselves or their own powers.
Christian Bovee
Yes", she said her voice dripping with sarcasm. "That's exactly what I'm saying, in fact let's try sex again." She leaped to her feet and torn open her jeans. "Maybe my magic vagina will cure you of all the traumatic acts my family has inflected on you.
Larissa Ione
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I guess I´m too used to sitting in a small room and making words do a few things. I see enough of humanity at the racetracks, the supermarkets, gas stations, freeways, cafes, etc. This can´t be helped. But I feel like kicking myself in the ass when I go to gatherings, even if the drinks are free. It never works for me. I´ve got enough clay to play with. People empty me. I have to get away to refill. I´m what´s best for me, sitting here slouched, smoking a beedie and watching this creen flash the words. Seldom do you meet a rare or interesting person. It´s more than galling, it´s a fucking constant shock. It´s making a god-damned grouch out of me. Anybody can be a god-damned grouch and most are. Help!
Charles Bukowski
How ugly we must look to them, spilling light into every dark corner to push back the shadows, blinding ourselves to the true beauty of emptiness.
Shaun David Hutchinson
I am fucking you, Tania, so that you'll stay fucked.
Henry Miller
Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon?
Tom Perrotta
The Waterbearer loves, loves, loves its freedom, but eventually, when freedom is the only goal, it can get a little limiting. That's when Aquarius realizes its freedom has become its prison.
John Marchesella
I suppose I was artistic as a child. Our house was so full of art and artists that it never occurred to me not to be constantly making things. I just assumed that all kids liked to work with their hands as much as I did. I was an only child so I did have a lot of time to be creative by myself and with my parents.
Wendy Froud
Holding a loved one is something the soul remembers.
G.B. Lindsey
When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.
Raymond Chandler
Consciousness is eternal, and it is part of you.
Amy Leigh Mercree
If you think there’s a thing—anything—women didn’t do in the past, you’re wrong.
Kameron Hurley
I feel keeping a promise to yourself is a direct reflection of the love you have for yourself. I used to make promises to myself and find them easy to break. Today, I love myself enough to not only make a promise to myself, but I love myself enough to keep that promise
Steve Maraboli
Isolated, she managed somehow to feel free—albeit with a freedom that made her want to smash a hole in the very center of the universe.
Flora Rheta Schreiber
The early worm catches the fishies and all, you know.
Heather Fleener
Love is being able to view a situation without adding duality to it.
Alaric Hutchinson
The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
Quentin Crisp
I was loving you, I am loving you and I will love you for the eternity. Love is eternal.
Debasish Mridha
Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, to even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now.We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Just remember: when your nerd talks to someone about "man tar", it has nothing to do with the stickiness on your sheets.
Piper Vaughn Xara X Xanakas
Acts of Kindness:A random act of kindness, no matter how small, can make a tremendous impact on someone else's life.
Roy T. Bennett
I love you," he said, holding her close and running his fingers through her tangled hair as if he couldn't believe she was still in his arms. "I think you've cast a spell on me, wicked witch that you are."tBaba thought that if this is what it meant to be wicked, she was all for it.
Deborah Blake
People who fit don’t seek. The seekers are those that don’t fit.
Shannon L. Alder
The common prejudice that love is as common as "romance" may be due to the fact that we all learned about it first through poetry. But the poets fool us; they are the only ones to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
Hannah Arendt
Look, I wanted to mention something to you," I said. Play it off as casual. Play it off as no big deal. Be cool.Her lips curled up in an amused smile. "Okay?""You know what a horrible prankster Will can be." She nodded and I continued: "I may have just done something to get back at him and I swear," I said, resting a hand on her shoulder, "I swear, Hanna, you'll think it's hilarious... eventually.""Eventually?""Absolutely. Eventually."She considered me through narrowed eyes. "This is just a prank, right? No shaved heads or scars?"I pulled back to study her. "That was a very specific question. Scars?" I shook my head, clearing it. "And no, no, no, no. Just a silly little prank." I gave Hanna my best smile, the one Chloe said made panties drop. But apparently it only made Hanna more suspicious.Her eyes narrowed further. "What would I need to do?""Nothing," I said. "You'll probably see some weird stuff but just... go along with it.""So, basically be oblivious.""Exactly," I said."And this will be funny?""Hilarious."She thought about it for a full ten seconds before reaching out to shake my hand. "You're on.
Christina Lauren
I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.
Rachel Hartman
The classics tell us that, in relationships, the one between teacher and student comes second only to the one between parent and child.
Lisa See
She sees things — things that might happen, things that are coming. But it’s very subjective. The future isn’t set in stone. Things change.
Stephenie Meyer
As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do. It's a big universe, of course, so He, She, or It, could be profitably employed in many places. But what has clearly been happening is that evolving before our eyes has been a God of the Gaps; that is, whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God. And then after a while, we explain it, and so that's no longer God's realm.
Carl Sagan