Quotes by American Authors - Page 2647

I'm often asked which author I am most inspired by, but I'm inspired by all authors. It takes a great deal of courage to pour your onto paper and watch silently as the world judges it loudly.

You're going to come across some truly gifted people in your lifetime that seem to know all the answers. However, they lost their personal relationship with God, along the way. Love them anyways, and do everything you can to help them restore that relationship. They are fighting a war that you don't know anything about.

We were in such good moods, we even decided to hit Todd's house for candy. Sam rang the doorbell, and when it opened, this hideous, rubber monster face roared at us. Sam screamed. Todd started laughing and took off the mask. I yelled, "Put it back on! Put it back on! Your hideousness is terrifying!"Todd did a fake yuk-yuk-yuk at my joke. "What are you guys supposed to be? Is it Prom Night Massacre or something?"Sam sighed at Todd's obvious stupidity. "We're zombie princesses, Todd. Can't you tell?" She stuck her arms straight out in front of her and said, "BRAINS! BRAINS!"I patted Sam on the head and said, "Sorry, Sam. You're wasting your time with this one.

The lives of thousands of young Frenchmen were ready for this literary bath of blood and sentiment in the 1830's. Their fathers and grandfathers had had their romanticism in the raw: the drama of the French Revolution, the glamour of the Napoleonic campaigns in Europe and in Africa had filled their lives with colour; now the young people, listening with envy to reminiscence and tradition, knew they were living in a world that had become flat and dull. For the unshackling of the Revolution and the pageantry and devotion of the Empire had been succeeded by two colourless Bourbon kings, who had learned nothing from the times and were so stupid as to insist on absolutism without providing any splendour to justify it; and when their line was expelled in a minor revolution in 1830 they were replaced by their even more colourless cousin, Louis Philippe of Orleans, a constitutional monarch whose virtue was that he was more bourgeois than the bourgeois and whom the newspapers caricatured unendingly, strolling with his family past the shops he owned, carrying an umbrella under his arm. In placing him on the throne the French bourgeoisie consolidated the gains it had begun to make forty years before, and his prime minister gave the watchword of the day when he urged his fellow-citizens to make as much money as they possibly could. The French bourgeois — the revolutionaries of 1789, the conquerors of Europe under Napoleon — became rich, smug, tenacious, and fearful of change; and their children and grandchildren, the young men of Flaubert's generation, were raised in an atmosphere of careful, commercial materialism, of complete lack of interest in literature and the arts, and of complete distrust of impulse and imagination.

In the words of Lynne McTaggart: "Living consciousness somehow is the influence that turns the possibility of something into something real. The most essential ingredient in creating our universe is the consciousness that observes it.

I imagine we're safe, happy, and truly in love. And I imagine that I can tell her without shame and stigma attached to my words. I imagine it because I don't know if I'll survive long enough to be able to live it.

I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!

And now it is said of meThat my love is nothing because I have borne no children, Or because I have fathered none;That I twisted the twig in my handsAnd cut the blossom free too soon from the seed;That I lay across the fire,And snuffed it dead sooner than draft or rain.But I have turned away, and drawn myself Upright to walk along the room alone. Across the dark the spines of cactus plants Remind me how I go—aloof, obscure, Indifferent to the words the children chalk Against my house and down the garden walls. They cannot tear the garden out of me,Nor smear my love with names. Love is a cliff, A clear, cold curve of stone, mottled by stars, smirched by the morning, carved by the dark sea Till stars and dawn and waves can slash no more, Till the rock’s heart is found and shaped again.I keep the house and say no words, the evening Falls like a petal down the shawl of trees. I light the fire and see the blossom dance On air alone; I will not douse that flame, That searing flower; I will burn in it.I will not banish love to empty rain.For I know that I am asked to hate myself For their sweet sakeWho sow the world with child.I am given to burn on the dark fire they make With their sly voices.But I have burned already down to bone. There is a fire that burns beyond the namesOf sludge and filth of which this world is made. Agony sears the dark flesh of the body,And lifts me higher than the smoke, to rise Above the earth, above the sacrifice;Until my soul flares outward like a blue Blossom of gas fire dancing in mid-air:Free of the body’s work of twisted iron.

With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.

Love spills out of these people. That's what I want. Settling for anything less is a lie.

Get your dance on today...move some energy around...visualize everything as you want it to be...Fullness, Completeness...You!

Outrage steamed her brain. "I've waited three days... Do you know what day it is?"tHe gave a one-sided shrug, his massive shoulder muscles shifting. "Who has time to check the calendar when people are shooting at you and snakes are biting you in the ass?

Oh, how magical it will be to have winter come every year.

Don't worry,' she told him. 'I am exceptionally good at keeping secrets.'- Frankie Landau-Banks

May our gratitude find expression in our prayers and our service for others, and in our commitment to live wholly for Christ.

I had to stop myself from laughing. Who needs help taking a pill?

If you are lacking confidence in something, just keep trying and don’t give up.

Today's science is tomorrow's technology.

Suffering occurs when love's two hands pull your soul in two directions.

Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.

And I got to thinking about the moral meaning of memory, per se. And what it means to forget, what it means to fail to find and preserve the connection with the dead whose lives you, or I, want or need to honor with our own.

Liberty as it is conceived by current opinion has nothing inherent about it it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behaviour.

The only way to maximize group creativity—to make the whole more than the sum of its parts—is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.

Wrapping his arms around her waist, he kissed her cheek. She inhaled his masculine scent, he smelled of engine grease, citrus hand cleaner and man. She turned in his arms and laid her cheek over his beating heart, treasuring the haven of his embrace...

It is important to live authentically who you are, to show yourself to your date as the bond between you builds.

Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.

The man who believes that honesty is the best policy is not an honest man.

We must be more and more to each other, my dear wife.' -Charles Darwin to wife Emma upon loss of daughter Annie

So she did not replay, but played the strategist. She retained more power by withholding an answer.

You're supposed to raise your friends up, not be happy when they fail.

Honey! Bring down a copy of my will - and an eraser!

Death does not end my life, it opens the door to a life without end.

Procrastinate now, don't put it off.

On the contrary, Christian Hedonists are persuaded with Edwards that the only affections that magnify God's value are those that come from true apprehensions of His glory. If the feast of worship is rare in the land, it is because there is a famine of the Word of God (Amos 8:11-12).

We do not remember days, Shemei, we remember moments, and the richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.

Commerce does not have to be a ruthless, brutal enterprise that damages people’s lives. It can be a source of happiness, healing, and hope.

You can only hold a smile for so long, after that it's just teeth.

I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it.

If rejections were cash, I'd be rich

Obedience makes our heart receptive to what God has already done. It doesn’t move Him; His heart is always aflame toward us. Generally, this revelation is not taught correctly by well-meaning ministers. The incorrect way that obedience is taught causes people to be overly-introspective, obsessing over their inadequacies and failures. It breeds SELF-ESTEEM issues instead of promoting CHRIST-ESTEEM wholeness. It breeds a destructive DEMAND-CONSCIOUSNESS (law) instead of a liberating SUPPLY-CONSCIOUSNESS (grace).

We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.

True Cause. History is full of war, of death, of sacrifice…of unimaginable brutality. All in the name of the Cause. The mighty Cause.It is not the idea of fighting for a cause that saddens me so. It is the ease with which people devote themselves to it. Men have flocked into the streets, marched, argued, fought, killed…for causes they didn’t even understand. They do it because they follow along, to be part of the group…or because they don’t want to be left out. Because they are told to, or because they crave to be part of something. They follow the Cause for many reasons, with great passion and staggering ignorance. Disturbingly rare among them, are people who fight because they truly understand the reasons for their struggle. Most are simply followers, nipping at the heels of their leaders, like dogs begging for scraps.Throughout history, men have fought for uncounted reasons. For land, for money, for hegemony over their neighbors. They have fought for religion, to avenge insults, to impose belief systems…or to resist such being forced upon them. Wars have been waged to preserve or eliminate slavery, to escape the yoke of political masters…or to impose such rule upon others. Men have fought against those they branded inferiors…and struggled against those who called themselves their betters.The drum has beaten the call to war throughout history, rallying men and women to fight for the Cause…to accept the inevitable pain and suffering of war. To sacrifice sons and daughters to the slaughter. To see cities burn and millions die in confusion, agony, and despair. All for the Cause.Since the dawn of recorded history, the flags have waved and the crowds have cheered. The soldiers have marched…they have marched to fight for the Cause.What did most of them get back from those who called them to war? Famine, disease, shortages, despair. Burned cities and broken dreams. A flag-draped coffin in place of a live son or daughter. Words, endless, professionally-written platitudes, offered by the masters in justification of the slaughter.How often was the Cause truly just, worth the pain and death and horror of war? How many of those billions, who took to the streets for 5,000 years and cheered and sang and rallied for the Cause…how many of them really understood? What percentage took the time to consider the facts, the situation…to question what they were told and ultimately decide for themselves if the Cause was true and righteous? How many mindlessly believed the words of their masters, giving their all to a cause they didn’t even comprehend? A Cause that wasn’t worthy of their sacrifice?What if the Cause is false, corrupt…a fraud created simply to urge men to fight? What if it serves nothing more than the base purposes of the leaders, buying them power with the blood of the people? What does the reasonable man, the just man, do if he discovers the Cause is false? Is there any retribution, any action, any violence unjustified in punishing those responsible? Could any horror that the oppressed and manipulated victims visit upon their former masters be unjustified. Does righteous vengeance become the Cause.

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ and author of the Four Spiritual Laws chose three words for his tombstone: "slave for Jesus".

I could feel his hand on my waist, his arms around me, feel the rise and fall of his chest next to mine as I held my breath, and wished the sun would drop out of the sky.

Until recently, attempts to resolve the contradictions created by urbanization, centralization, bureaucratic growth and statification were viewed as a vain counterdrift to "progress"—a counterdrift that could be dismissed as chimerical and reactionary. The anarchist was regarded as a forlorn visionary, a social outcast, filled with nostalgia for the peasant village or the medieval commune. His yearnings for a decentralized society and for a humanistic community at one with nature and the needs of the individual—the spontaneous individual, unfettered by authority—were viewed as the reactions of a romantic, of a declassed craftsman or an intellectual "misfit." His protest against centralization and statification seemed all the less persuasive because it was supported primarily by ethical considerations—by Utopian, ostensibly "unrealistic," notions of what man could be, not by what he was. In response to this protest, opponents of anarchist thought-- liberals, rightists and authoritarian "leftists"—argued that they were the voices of historic reality, that their statist and centralist notions were rooted in the objective, practical world. Time is not very kind to the conflict of ideas. Whatever may have been the validity of libertarian and non-libertarian views a few years ago, historical development has rendered virtually all objections to anarchist thought meaningless today. The modern city and state, the massive coal-steel technology of the Industrial Revolution, the later, more rationalized, systems of mass production and assembly-line systems of labor organization, the centralized nation, the state and its bureaucratic apparatus—all have reached their limits. Whatever progressive or liberatory role they may have possessed, they have now become entirely regressive and oppressive. They are regressive not only because they erode the human spirit and drain the community of all its cohesiveness, solidarity and ethico-cultural standards; they are regressive from an objective standpoint, from an ecological standpoint. For they undermine not only the human spirit and the human community but also the viability of the planet and all living things on it.

I have a scar-a faint gouge in my knee from when I fell down on the sidewalk as a child. It's always seemed stupid to me that none of the pain I've experienced has left a visible mark; sometimes, without a way to prove it to myself. I began to doubt that I had lied through it at all, with the memories becoming hazy over time. I want to have some kind of reminder that while wounds heal, they don't disappear forever- I carry them everywhere, always, and that is the way of things, the way of scars.That is what this tattoo will be, for me: a scar. And it seems fitting that it should document the worst memory of pain I have.

King Yorandt to Kristina in book three of Fracture the Secret Enemy Saga~Secretsrelease date: Summer 2014 Even the master does not play perfectly. He can only hope to make fewer mistakes than his opponent, and that in the end, he is the victor. Sajah (chess) is a ruthless game where the pieces are all pawns and the Queen is the true killer. She spares no one to protect the king. The king however, is ruled by all of the pieces that lay before him, even his opponent. Every move is a decision that can change the whole board, and the endgame.

A contentious, belligerent Christian isn’t living according to the Spirit but according to the flesh. When we stubbornly insist on our own way and are insensitive to others, peace is not our goal.

Ignorance is the world's most curable affliction.

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass... It's about learning how to dance in the rain.- Vivian Greene

He cups my facewith both handsleans in,eyes lingering asweet secondbefore his lips are there on mine,teasing, playing, tasting, kissing.When he pulls away,I'm breathless.He nuzzles my ear."Now that's thrilling."You got that right.

What about you? Girlfriend? Wife? Kids? Perhaps a gaggle of towheaded, extra large boys who already excel at sports and know how to make fire with the ass end of a lightning bug?

To be happy, think about happiness, and see happiness and beauty in every little thing.

I think I benefited from being equal parts ambitious and curious. And of the two, curiosity has served me best.

[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over (which is why you eat, of course). You are not even the same shape as you were then. The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.

The Quaker did not scream: not when the blood began to come swiftly down his face, not when the force of Elf's attack carried both of them tumbling out over the walls and down into the ether, the desperate and hoped-for outcome, a fatal embrace descending, together forever, into the darkness.

Never speak unless you can improve upon the stupidness of people's silence.

Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.

No. Your thoughts are what make you. But your body isn't a meaningless thing either. Call me strange, but I think only the person you love the most should see you like that. And not here--in an ugly, dirty place--when you haven't even thought about it.