Quotes by American Authors - Page 2639

You can believe that you are a good and caring person, but if you don't treat others with goodness and care, where is the proof?
Nick Vujicic
In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours.In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.
Maya Angelou
Violet unwrapped everything old as if it were a ribboned gift given to her by the Gods.
Suzka
You know when I told you the joke about how a friend will help you move, but a real friend will help you move a body? I was only kidding.
Brad Thor
What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.
Joseph Campbell
And when I saw him[my father] lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might be not. Either way, we're on our own.
Cassandra Clare
She thought about how in that moment life was perfect because it was simple. One truck, a world asleep, and a million stars.It didn’t matter where they were going. She was just existing.
Tessa Shaffer
To withhold our bodies from religion is to exclude religion from our lives.
Dallas Willard
It's the way a man chooses to limit himself that determines his character. A man without habits, consistency, redundancy - and hence boredom - is not human. He's insane.
Luke Rhinehart
Someday those bruises inside you will heal. You can't know when someday will come, or what life will look like when it finally does. ... But in a way it doesn't even matter because someday isn't what we have. What we have is right now, this moment, when things aren't okay yet, but in a way they are already, because in the end they will be, and as long as that's true, it's enough.
Lauren Miller
Art helps you connect to the world, not escape from it. That is the difference between art and entertainment.
James Rozoff
If they'd been dogs, they would have all been in the yard eating grass and trying to yak up whatever was making them feel so lousy. Not a bone gnawed, not a ball chased-all tails went unwagged. Oh, life is a fast cat, a short leash, a flea in that place where you just can't scratch.
Christopher Moore
I already feel like the Girl Who Lived around here.
Jennifer Silverwood
War does have a way of interfering with one's most closely held desires.
Helen Simonson
Humans don’t just kill to survive. Sometimes, they kill out of rage. And they don’t just eat to survive; sometimes, they eat when their belly is already full. They are violent and greedy. They aren’t like any of the other beasts in the forest; they want to own it all.
Mark Van Steenwyk
Every living creature on the earth is special. You want to be the one that puts an end to one of them?
Sue Monk Kidd
The beauty of the flute was in its simplicity, in its resemblance to the human voice. It always sounded clear. It sounded alone. The piano, on the other hand, was a network of parts—a ship, with its strings like rigging, its case a hull, its lifted lid a sail. Kestrel always thought that the piano didn't sound like a single instrument but a twinned one, with its low and high halves merging together or pulling apart.
Marie Rutkoski
Each religion by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
George Santayana
Problems come to our life not to give us pain, but to make us humble, kind, strong and fearless.
Debasish Mridha
All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience, or foolishness.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
Robert A. Heinlein
To waste valuable time on stressing over those who treat you unkindly, accomplish nothing of importance. Rather, that time should be spent working on most important things, that actually create something of value that is worth your time.
Ellen J. Barrier
I would like to think of my 'ignorance' less as a personal failing and more as a massive cultural trend, an example of doubling, of psychic numbing, that characterizes the end of the millennium. If we can’t act on knowledge, then we can’t survive without ignorance.
Ruth Ozeki
There are many shortcuts to failure, but there are no shortcuts to true success.
Orrin Woodward
Chronically awkward people can feel like everyone else received a secret instruction manual at birth titled "How to be Socially Competent." For the awkward person, this dreamy manual would provide easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions on how to gracefully navigate social life, avoid embarrassing faux pas, and rid oneself of the persistent anxiety that comes with being awkward.
Ty Tashiro
Privilege is when you can afford to sit back and watch as others' rights are trampled upon.
DaShanne Stokes
I’m back there again, broken from being a champion,The boy that no one loved,The years I spent training like a method actor toBecome the man that everyone admired,But it means nothing, Like ashes on a forehead, they marked me inferior,When I was still young enough to receive it into the grain of my being
Terrence Alonzo Craft
He asks, in a softer voice, "Does your arm still hurt?"You touch it with your hand. The big ache is gone, leaving only the little, underneath ache that will gather and swell against the bone. The blood leaks out of the vein where he grabbed you. But you say, "It's better now.
Jim Grimsley
Remember to stop as often as necessary to re-connect your energy. Stay full, stay in a state of love. Remember that once you achieve the state of love, nothing nor anyone can pull more energy from you that you can replace. In fact, the energy flowing out of you creates a current that pulls energy into you at the same rate. You can never run out. But you must stay conscious of this process in order for it to work. This is especially important when you interact with people.
James Redfield
Here's the thing,' he said, his face strained. 'It's just that I've been treading really carefully around you and this whole Cordy thing all day, just like Mort told me to. And I had to make sure you saw her and were okay with it and got home safe — again, just like Mort told me to. And as much as I'd love to continue exploring the implications of Damning roadkill, the truth is' — he plunged his hands into his hair until it stuck up even more than usual — 'you've been back here in my presence for two agonizing hours now, and if we don't properly make out soon, I'm going to hurl myself off the roof.
Gina Damico
I like a story that could never happen to me. If I want real life I'll read a newspaper.
Lemony Snicket
I would guess, perhaps too optimistically, that nearly ever racist believes it is morally wrong to be racist. And since nearly every person thinks of themselves as being moral, then a racist must consciously and subconsciously employ tortured logic in order to explain away their racism--in order to believe themselves to be nonracist.
Sherman Alexie
Is it a crime to want to be good? she cried
Luis Alberto Urrea
Don't talk, just listen, and feel with all your heart.
Debasish Mridha
For all the pain I saw at Paterson, it is nothing compared to the pain that people inflict upon each other in the real world. All I can think of now is that it is not right for me to be unaware of that pain, including the pain that I inflict on others. Only how is it possible to live without being either numb to it or overwhelmed by it?
Francisco X. Stork
Would that death were like this. Would that one would sleep and sleep and sleep forever.
Anne Rice
You are not for everyone. But you are for someone.
Julieanne O'Connor
Every challenge in your life works out in the long run. If you can adopt this mindset, you’ll face your challenges with the knowledge and courage that it all works out in the end. You’ll no longer fear them and you’ll look forward to the lessons to be learned from every experience...
James A. Murphy
His hands wrapped around her upper arms, holding her gently. "You are even more beautiful when you dance.
Melanie Dickerson
Great writers teach as well as entertain.
Beem Weeks
I'm not issuing some naïve plea for civility or bipartisanship here, or pretending that the opposing sides in this fight are intellectually equal. We have irreconcilable visions of the kind of country we want this to be: some of us would just like to live in Canada with better weather; others want something more like Iran with Jesus. My cruelest hope for the Tea Party is that one of their candidates wins the nomination for the presidency and they implode of their hubristic stupidity. But at least when I hear about them now, instead of reflexively picturing some braying ignoramus like Michele Bachmann, I try to remember that Matt [a friend of the Author's, ed] is out in that crowd somewhere, too. God agreed to spare Sodom if ten good men could be found within its walls (Abraham had to haggle him down from fifty). He ended up napalming those perverts anyway but the basic principle of sparing the sinner for the sake of the righteous, or the shithead for the sake of the basically okay, remains sound.
Tim Kreider
Please try not to need me. That’s the worst bait of all to a lonely man.
John Steinbeck
I was ambitious and desperate to direct my first film, so I capitulated and blew it. Never again. Never fucking again.
Craig Ferguson
A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with. I would rather go before the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied.But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living.
Wendell Berry
She said, "Right now, while we have this time, I'm not going to do any of that other stuff. I'm going to seize this moment and simply enjoy being with Jesus while I can." Mary made a deliberate choice. She wasn't being lazy and using company as an excuse to get out of helping her sister with chores. She was choosing to focus on what mattered the most.
Craig Groeschel
She wasnt exactly sure when it happened. Or even when it started. All she knew for sure was that right here and now, she was falling hard and she could only pray that he was feeling the same way.
Nicholas Sparks
Statistically speaking, there is a 65 percent chance that the love of your life is having an affair. Be very suspicious.
Scott Dikkers
Broad-Based Education:Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.… I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.… Itwas beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practicalapplication in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.—Commencement address, Stanford University,June 12, 2005
George Beahm
Honor,' he said firmly. 'I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power.
Lois Lowry
It is not often that you see life and fiction take each other by the hand and dance.
Lawrence Thornton
Imaginative writers often project their own monsters and meanings on basic facts.
Christopher Bram
Change may not always bring growth, but there is no growth without change.
Roy T. Bennett
Reading is a bridge from misery to hope.
Rebecca VanDeMark
Emptying the ashtrays was very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled ‘the past,’ and having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue.
Zelda Fitzgerald
Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change
Frank Herbert
This women's orchestra made a demure picture in their muted dove grays, alright, but they played like they were gowned in scarlet and gold.
Bailey Bristol
Why does everyone think a guy who prefers love to people is missing something in his life?
Slash Coleman
Often, when I read the news, I have to make sure I am not, in fact, reading The Onion. We continue to have national and state debates about abortion, birth control, and reproductive freedom, and men, mostly, are directing that debate. That is the stuff of satire.
Roxane Gay
The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive
Albert Einstein
Self-reflection enables every person to alter the trajectory of their personal storyline by reviewing a series of episodic occurrences and making value judgments regarding the past. How we perceive our history colors the present, our deeds of today script the future outcome of individual persons, and the outcome of many people making conscious decisions using their cognitive processes including the ability to remember and share memories influences the direction of human development and the progress of society.
Kilroy J. Oldster