Quotes by American Authors - Page 2701

Mr. Prince, would you like to know the most significant event in the history of freedom?""The American Revolution?""A defensible choice, a close second even, but not mine. I would choose the moment when the Roman plebians required the patricians to write down the twelve tables of the law and put them where everyone could see them -- thereby proclaimed the law supreme over the politicians. The rule of law is the essence of freedom.
Jerry Pournelle
A wolf is clever-clever-clever, and they are as faithful as a debt unpaid.
Tad Williams
As I came closer, it took shape: long, slender, and curling, with numerous heart-shaped leaves. I felt my soul leap inside me. For Ivy's tree was now hung with her namesake. Jade-green ivy clutched the bark with such strength that, no matter how hard you pulled, it would never let go.I know I started crying
Colleen Boyd
You're so good at what you do, keep pushing, success is on the table at all times!
Sereda Aleta Dailey
Don't ... depend on current fashion or ... popular opinion.
John F. Nash
Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!
Andrew Levkoff
Magic. It can get a guy killed.
Jim Butcher
Laughing made me feel safe. I was not going to be enveloped by the seediness that coated this world like dust.
Joan Rivers
We see ourselves as self-sufficient, self-important, and self-sustaining. God sees us as dependent, self-centered, and self-deceived.
Billy Graham
The devil's happy when the critics run you off.
Criss Jami
Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.
Stephen King
It wasn't a lie, not at all like one of those lies she told herself all the time, like This is the last drink of the evening, or I'm not going to set the bitch's house on fire.
Melissa de la Cruz
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.
Erich Fromm
What do you do?" I ask. "I live.""I live" is not an answer, until I think about it. Maybe it's the perfect answer.
Jewel E. Ann
A lot of parents make you feel very awkward when you meet them.
Stephen Chbosky
Success is a poor teacher
Robert T. Kiyosaki
Twango's hospitality, though largely symbolic, does him credit.
Jack Vance
Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go. Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day. maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.
Ann Brashares
Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which don’t sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that float from foreign ships. They let scores of invisible imps loose out of found bottles. In a scoop of salt water, they revive the dead blobs that have been beached in storms and tides: fins, whiskers, and gills unfold; mouths, eyes, and colors bloom and spread. Sometimes ocean people are given to understand the newness and oldness of the world; then all morning they try to keep that boundless joy like a little sun inside their chests. The ocean also makes its people know immensity.
Maxine Hong Kingston
I have daughters and I have sons.When one of them lays a handOn my shoulder, shining fishTurn suddenly in the deep sea.
Robert Bly
Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I pointed to a low bowl filled with what purported to be stew, but then Noah said, “Are you goingto point, or are you going to eat?”“I just like to know what I’m putting in my mouth before I swallow.”Noah arched an eyebrow, and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
Michelle Hodkin
I love you,' Buttercup said. 'I know this must come as something of a surprise to you, since all I've ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn't matter.' Buttercup still could not look at him. The sun was rising behind her now; she could feel the heat on her back, and it gave her courage. 'I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love you so much more now then when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison. There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, my knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey. Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days? I will do that. Do you want me to crawl? I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you, or if you are hungry, let me bring you food, or if you have thirst and nothing will quench it but Arabian wine, I will go to Araby, even though it is across the world, and bring a bottle back for your lunch. Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, I will learn to do. I know I cannot compete with the Countess in skills or wisdom or appeal, and I saw the way she looked at you. And I saw the way you looked at her. But remember, please, that she is old and has other interests, while I am seventeen and for me there is only you. Dearest Westley--I've never called you that before, have I?--Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley,--darling Westley, adored Westley, sweet perfect Westley, whisper that I have a chance to win your love.' And with that, she dared the bravest thing she'd ever done; she looked right into his eyes.
William Goldman
Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter.
Ansel Adams
Take your past off life support.
Suzette R. Hinton
Stop making a relationship about what you get and start making it about what you give, for what you give is what you'll get in return.
Rob Liano
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
Fred Allen
I used to think that when people fell in love, they just landed where they landed, and they had no choice in the matter afterward. And maybe that’s true of beginnings, but it’s not true of this, now.I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.
Veronica Roth
You cannot keep something down that is bound to rise.
Juliet C. Obodo
Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
Stephen King
Great artists need great clients.
I.M. Pei
I force myself to think of anything but the one thing that I'm actually always thinking about. And that is so exhausting that I sleep more than I ever have.
Holly Goldberg Sloan
She hoped he kissed her.Only her.And that when he kissed her, he was thinking about her.Only her.If he kissed her, she would kiss him back.She would kiss him back with everything she had.Every last person in the stadium would watch her kiss him, and every last one of them would know she wouldn't have minded kissing him forever.
Jamie Farrell
People will always prefer black-and-white over shades of grey, and so there will always be the temptation to hold overly-simplified beliefs and to hold them with excessive confidence
Thomas Gilovich
Hope comes in the form of synchronicities. When one even occurs and is followed by another, which is in complete alignment with the first, we sense we are not alone. We know, intuitively throughout our beings, that what we are experiencing is the universe lovingly embracing us.
Susan Barbara Apollon
...the naive forms of Christian moral motivation - bare threats of hell and the bribery of heaven - stunt moral growth by ensuring believers remain emotional children, never achieving the cognitive moral development of adults. Psychologists have established that mature adults are moral not because of bare threats and bribes (that stage of moral development typifies children, not adults), but because they care about the effects their behavior has on themselves and others.
Richard C. Carrier
Sable hair bisected his pecs and arrowed down to the straight and unequivocal statement of his returned interest. Forcing my gaze to his face, I said, "I really don't think we have time for that.""You know that, and I know that, but HE doesn't believe it.""Believe it," I told HIM.J.X.'s mouth tugged into one of those heart-stopping smiles. "Maybe you should whisper in his ear.
Josh Lanyon
You cannot believe what you do not believe, Rumi siad. I am an Untouchable because my karma dictates it.
Christopher Moore
If you don't build a personal brand, someone else will brand you with the wrong label.
Richie Norton
Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.
Denis Johnson
A man worth loving is a man that never makes you feel like an option.
Shannon L. Alder
If I can’t picture it, I can’t understand it.
Albert Einstein
But the cruel quirk in the situation is that conditions on the other side of the line are so hopeless that 500 are now returning out of the 1000 who escaped daily. There is no place for them in Germany.....Nothing reveals the present state of affairs more clearly than the fact that people who risk their lives to get out of Soviet territory take the greater risk of going back when they see what awaits them outside.
Anne O'Hare McCormick
I've arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore I must stop doing what I have been doing.
Alice Koller
Reading is weightlifting for the brain
Tim Green
Most of the students there, he said, don't know what they think. You tell 'em, they'll think it. I plan to tell 'em.
John Knowles
Often secret desires as well as abilities surface in our dreams.
P.C. Cast
When posing for a photograph, spinsters should avoid looking desperate or deprived. A serene smile will show that your circumstances are by choice and not for lack of beauty or character. -Miss Gertrude Hasslebrink, 1878
Margaret Brownley
You care so much for that special person because it feels like that person is part of you.
Sandra Villa
Silently sit on the beach, close your eyes, now see the flowing blue sky, feel the dance of waves, and hear the whispering love song of the southern breeze.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
The Bible Belt is collapsing. The world of nominal, cultural Christianity that took the American dream and added Jesus to it in order to say, 'you can have everything you ever wanted and Heaven too,' is soon to be gone. Good riddance.
Russell D. Moore
An Odonian’s goal is positive, not negative. Suffering is dysfunctional, except as a bodily warning against danger. Psychologically and socially it’s merely destructive.
Ursula K Le Guin
...The efficacy of psychedelics with regard to art has to do with their ability to render language weightless, as fluid and ephemeral as those famous "bubble letters" of the sixties. Psychedelics, I think, disconnect both the signifier and the signified from their purported referents in the phenomenal world - simultaneously bestowing upon us a visceral insight into the cultural mechanics of language, and a terrifying inference of the tumultuous nature that swirls beyond it. In my own experience, it always seemed as if language were a tablecloth positioned neatly upon the table until some celestial busboy suddenly shook it out, fluttering and floating it, and letting it fall back upon the world in not quite the same position as before - thereby giving me a vertiginous glimpse into the abyss that divides the world from our knowing of it. And it is into this abyss that the horror vacui of psychedelic art deploys itself like an incandescent bridge. Because it is one thing to believe, on theoretical evidence, that we live in a prison-house of language. It is quite another to know it, to actually peek into the slippery emptiness as the Bastille explodes around you. Yet psychedelic art takes this apparent occasion for despair and celebrates our escape from linguistic control by flowing out, filling that rippling void with meaningful light, laughter, and a gorgeous profusion.
Dave Hickey
Scatter seeds of kindness everywhere you go Scatter bits of courtesy-watch them grow and grow. Gather buds of friendship keep them till full-blown You will find more happiness than you have ever known.
Amy R. Raabe
sex separation in the classroom leads to a bullshit socio-economic situation perpetuated by people with good intentions.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Humanized gods are too small to captivate my imagination, or be worthy of my fullest allegiance.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I think you’re freaked about what happened at Cambridge. I think it scared you."“I’ve been through worse, Bex,” I said, joining her on the lower stairs. “Way worse.”“Oh, not the attack.” Bex raised her finger in contradiction. “What happened before the attack. I think you saw the future. Which is kind of freaky when - two months ago - you didn’t think you were going to have one.
Ally Carter
Beginning in 1519 and continuing until the end of his life, Luther expounded a theme that the Sacrament brings and means a fellowship of love and mercy: "This fellowship consists in this, that all the spiritual possessions of Christ and his saints are shared with and become the common property of him who receives this sacrament. Again all sufferings and sins also become common property; and thus love engenders love in return and [mutual love] unites . . . It is like a city where every citizen shares with all the others the city's name, honor, freedom, trade, customs, usages, help, support, protection, and the like, while at the same time he shares all the dangers of fire and flood, enemies and death, losses taxes and the like. For he who would share in the profits must also share in the costs, and ever recompense love with love . . ." For Luther, unity with respect to the Sacrament meant both doctrinal agreement and love. When the prerequisite to church fellowship is defined merely (however important!) in terms of doctrinal fellowship, it can end in a Platonic pursuit of a frigid and rigid mental ideal. Doctrinal unity, true unity in Christ's body and blood, is also a unity of deep love and mercy. If I will not lay down my burden on Christ and the community, or take up the burdens of others who come to the Table, then I should not go to the Sacrament. Close(d) Communion is also a fellowship of love and mercy with my brother and sister in Christ as Luther taught in the previous citation.
Matthew C. Harrison
We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.
George Santayana
The inherent mystery itself: that elusive brightness that flows out of dreams; the brightness that, when we awaken, is already fading from our minds—I still pursued it almost every morning, in spite of my many hours of tortured sleep.
Diane B. Saxton