Quotes by American Authors - Page 2622

The more we love the more we lose. The more we lose the more we learn. The more we learn the more we love. It comes full circle. Life is the school, love is the lesson. We cannot lose.
Kate McGahan
It's where we go and what we do when we get there that tells us who we are.
Joyce Carol Oates
Just because it is night now it doesn't mean that there is no morning. Just hope for the best and be patient.
Debasish Mridha
We are what we are, neither a good or as bad as others paint us. And what we are doesn't change how truly we feel, only how free we are to follow those feelings.
Melissa Marr
Engaging in activities devoid of difficulty, lounging in risk-free zones, is life without great meaning.
Jon M. Huntsman Sr.
Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.
Ally Condie
You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
William Faulkner
I sit, but I'm still stiff as a board. My hands are clenched tight, as if I'm holding my tears in my palms and if I loose my grip, they'll come tumbling out.
Lauren Morrill
It would not be too strong to say that I felt sane for the first time in my life. And yet the change in my consciousness seemed entirely straightforward. I was simply talking to my friend—about what, I don’t recall—and realized that I had ceased to be concerned about myself. I was no longer anxious, self-critical, guarded by irony, in competition, avoiding embarrassment, ruminating about the past and future, or making any other gesture of thought or attention that separated me from him. I was no longer watching myself through another person’s eyes.
Sam Harris
The only prescription for morality is this: Remember that every woman could have been your mother, every girl could be your daughter. Remember that every man could have been your father, every boy could be your son. When it comes to matters of the heart, that's all that needs to be kept in mind, always, at all times. Whatever form of hurt you cause, will echo in your children one day. Whatever form of judgments you make, must be held up against the condition of your father or your mother. When this is done— one sees that there is no room to judge and that there is no room to hurt, another.
C. JoyBell C.
Admitting the need for help may also compound the survivor's sense of defeat. The therapists Inger Agger and Soren Jensen, who work with political refugees, describe the case of K, a torture survivor with severe post-traumatic symptoms who adamantly insisted that he had no psychological problems: "K...did not understand why he was to talk with a therapist. His problems were medical: the reason why he did not sleep at night was due to the pain in his legs and feet. He was asked by the therapist...about his political background, and K told him that he was a Marxist and that he had read about Freud and he did not believe in any of that stuff: how could his pain go away by talking to a therapist?
Judith Lewis Herman
Best of all are the decorations the grandchildren have made ~ fat little stars and rather crooked Santas, shaped out of dough and baked in the oven.
Gladys Taber
If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be one nation gone under.
Ronald Reagan
While pity shows a lack of respect for other human beings, compassion has its roots in a deep respect for others. Pity is an emotion; compassion is a connection. Compassion sees the other as equal. Compassion happens when we care for another person enough to make his or her problems our own.
Matt Litton
Why didn't you tell me that evil could be so lighthearted?
Margaret Peterson Haddix
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.
Lewis H. Lapham
You are quite right, I changed my mind and do no longer speak of “radical evil.” … It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth that can be radical.(letter to Scholem from December 1964)
Hannah Arendt
Claiming that a person who views the Bible as nothing but a compendium of myths is thus denying the existence of a Creator is like claiming a person who rejects the junk science behind ‘man-made global warming’ is denying the existence of atmosphere.
Dave Champion
Success in politics is the art of the timely lie.
Marty Rubin
No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.
B.F. Skinner
If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that's as dear to life as breathing.
Ami McKay
[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain, period.
Jodi Picoult
Mickey holds up the soggy paper. DIE. Don't you die.
Kathleen Glasgow
Each one of us is the architect of his own fate; and he is unfortunate indeed who will try to build himself without the inspiration of God, without realizing that he grows from within, not from without.
David O. McKay
No matter where you go, there you are!
Coleen Singer
Will you quit shouting and let me bleed in peace!
Ransom Riggs
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
Eddie Adams
Meanwhile, back in the real world, my first instinct is a sort of stupid ducking motion I’ve learned from the movies, and I have the sure sense I’m going to be shot in the neck, where I feel particularly exposed and vulnerable.
Charles D'Ambrosio
People who are loving are kind, and those who are kind become beloved.
Debasish Mridha
...Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant...
Gary Taubes
Anyhow, I had found something out about an unknown privation, and I realized how a general love or craving, before it is explicit or before it sees its object, manifests itself as boredom or some other kind of suffering. And what did I think of myself in relation to the great occasions, the more sizable being of these books? Why, I saw them, first of all. So suppose I wasn't created to read a great declaration, or to boss a palatinate, or send off a message to Avignon, and so on, I could see, so there nevertheless was a share for me in all that had happened. How much of a share? Why, I knew there were things that would never, because they could never, come of my reading. But this knowledge was not so different from the remote but ever-present death that sits in the corner of the loving bedroom; though it doesn't budge from the corner, you wouldn't stop your loving. Then neither would I stop my reading. I sat and read. I had no eye, ear, or interest for anything else--that is, for usual, second-order, oatmeal, mere-phenomenal, snarled-shoelace-carfare-laundry-ticket plainness, unspecified dismalness, unknown captivities; the life of despair-harness or the life of organization-habits which is meant to supplant accidents with calm abiding. Well, now, who can really expect the daily facts to go, toil or prisons to go, oatmeal and laundry tickets and the rest, and insist that all moments be raised to the greatest importance, demand that everyone breathe the pointy, star-furnished air at its highest difficulty, abolish all brick, vaultlike rooms, all dreariness, and live like prophets or gods? Why, everybody knows this triumphant life can only be periodic. So there's a schism about it, some saying only this triumphant life is real and others that only the daily facts are. For me there was no debate, and I made speed into the former.
Saul Bellow
In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.
James Scott Bell
Money is ego, and people won't give it up. Just want to protect themselves, hold onto it like a blanket. They don't realize it makes them slaves. It's sick.
Emma Cline
The only think I like better than talking about Food is eating.
John Walters
Be a fountain of love, positivity, kindness, and abundance.
Debasish Mridha
Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. ... The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.
Ronald Reagan
God favors men and women who delight in being made worthy of happiness before the happiness itself.
Criss Jami
What must it be like for a woman to live with power over men rivaled only by God for the first third of her life, build her identity over her looks, only to feel it slip away as time tumbles by? Feel the shift in how people treat her, as though getting old is a contagious affliction?
Tyler Knight
The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop.
Alfred Hitchcock
I want my own bed, in my own apartment. Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home.
Audrey Niffenegger
Keep the other person's well-being in mind when you feel an attack of soul-purging truth coming on.
Betty White
Always put your best foot forward, because you never know where your next step may lead you.
Stephan Labossiere
It was like being leaned on by a very heavy, warm brick. A sexy brick.
Patricia Briggs
Imagine," she said, after registering, "a whole city of gorgeous Italian guys. They can say anything to me, and it'll be sexy." "You'll be so easy," Rashmi said. "Would you like-ah to order-ah the spa-ghe-tti? 'Oh, do me, Marco!
Stephanie Perkins
Let him lust for you until he has blue balls
Sylvia Day
I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover.Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.
Jon Krakauer
So what are you supposed to do with it?"He eyed her incredulously. "For real? It's called a butt plug. What do you think you're supposed to do with it?"She scratched her nose and nodded, trying not to let the apprehension show. "Okay. I'll do it. But if it hurts, just let me know and I'll take it out, stat. Don't be a hero."He gaped at her and shook his head. "Aw, no. Sweetie. That's not for me.
Christine Bell
I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?
Laurie Halse Anderson
My heart didn’t break into a thousand pieces after he left. Instead, I realized all the things he didn’t do. He didn’t want to hear my stories. He didn’t ask me questions. He didn’t smile when I was talking to him. He didn’t hug me out of the blue to make me feel good. His hugs were always a preamble to something else and after he was gone, I wondered if he ever knew me at all.
Diane Les Becquets
Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, 'that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.
John Adams
As my mom used to say,"If wishes were horses, we'd be up to our eyeballs in shit.
Cat Adams
I think the teaching profession contributes more to the future of our society than any other single profession.
John Wooden
There's more than one way to be a person. Actually, there are more than two or three ways. You'd think that was obvious, but I find that often it is not. The world is essentially a collection of teams. Life is a process of deciding which ones we're going to join.
Meghan Daum
Sometimes the hardest journeys are the ones that begin with little hope. But we need to take them anyway.
Richard Finney
When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.
Lewis B. Smedes
As she lay awake, she reminded herself that she was beating the depression; she was winning her life back. She had survived, and now she was going to be better than ever before.
Jonathan Rottenberg
Remind me, Lord, of why I create things and that YOU ... you are the best of artists, put these gifts in me to share with the world.
Jennifer Allwood
I want to know who killed my father,” Peter growled, shrugging off her fingers and pushing himself away from the wall to stand up straight. “If you think you can help me with that, then you are welcome to try.
Deborah Blake
As impossible as this may seem (in infertility), try to reach outside of yourself and realize all of the things that you are able to do for now because you do not have children. There are seasons in life, and for now yours is an unfettered one. Allow God to use you in the present. The best way to help alleviate your pain is to try to help others alleviate their pain.
Sara Dormon
There is a poem at the heart of things and a mythic story in the heart of each of us. At certain times it is the poetry of life and the mythic imagination of the soul that become necessary in order to heal the wounds inflicted by an excess of reason or an overuse of force.
Michael Meade