Quotes by American Authors - Page 2761

I think about what the man at the Coney joint said. He was right. We are the people who stay. We stay in our homes and pay them off. We stay at our jobs. We do our thirty and come home to stay even more. We stay until we are no longer able to mow our lawns and our gutters sag with saplings, until our houses look haunted to the neighborhood children. We like it where we are. I guess then the other question is: Why do we even travel? There can only be one answer to that: we travel to appreciate home. (p.97)
Michael Zadoorian
They all call me "Excuse me," even though my nametag clearly says "Jordan." It's like people don't actually exist while they're working. Workers are just tools who aren't supposed to have feelings or personalities. You don't become human until your shift is over. Until then, we're all just zombies. We're dead to the world: infected people who need to be avoided, unless, of course, someone needs to know where the paintbrushes are located.
J. Cornell Michel
A family is like medicine." She twisted her lips into a sardonic smile. "Best in small doses.
Alexandra Ivy
Often when he was not working he had come here and sat an entire afternoon, lulled by the din and music from the other rooms into a state of vague ecstasy, while he contemplated the small sheet of water outside the window. It was that happy frame of mind into which his people could project themselves so easily - the mere absence of immediate unpleasant preoccupation could start it off, and a landscape which included the sea, a river, a fountain, or anything that occupied the eye without engaging the mind, was of use in sustaining it. It was the world behind the world, where reflection precludes the necessity for action, and the calm which all things seek in death appears briefly in the guise of contentment, the spirit at last persuaded that the still waters of perfection are reachable.
Paul Bowles
Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer.
Marcia Wieder
T-4.II.6. Only those who have a real and lastingsense of abundance can be truly charitable. This isobvious when you consider what is involved. Tothe ego, to give anything implies that you willhave to do without it. When you associate givingwith sacrifice, you give only because you believethat you are somehow getting something better,and can therefore do without the thing you give.“Giving to get” is an inescapable law of the ego, which always evaluates itself in relation to other egos. It is therefore continually preoccupied with the belief in scarcity that gave rise to it. Its whole perception of other egos as real is only an attempt to convince itself that it is real. “Self-esteem” in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory. This “self-esteem” is always vulnerable to stress, a term which refers to any perceived threat to the ego’s existence.
Foundation for Inner Peace
Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe he is dead.
H.L. Mencken
The Bible is just a book. But, you choose whether to prove it's all true or nothing.
Shim Steward
Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotions, because the body always follows the mind.
Bruce Lee
You create your own masterpiece as your actions draw pictures of your life canvas.
Debasish Mridha
When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice,' Amos liked to say. 'Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens.
Michael Lewis
The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
That the writers of the Bible recognized a plurality of gods -- were polytheists -- is proved by the following 'And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us' (Gen. iii, 22). 'Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?' (Ex. xv, 11.) 'Among the gods, there is none like unto thee, O Lord' (Ps. Ixxxvi, 8). 'The Lord is a great God, and a great king above all gods' (Ps. xcv, 3). 'Thou shalt not revile the gods' (Ex. xxii, 28).Monotheism, the doctrine of one god, is not merely the worship of one god, but the belief in the existence of one god only. Many were monotheistic in worship -- worshiped one god, their national deity -- while at the same time they were polytheistic in belief -- believed in the existence of many gods. The Jews who worshiped Jehovah have been called monotheists. And yet, for a thousand years, they believed in the existence of Kemosh, Baal, Moloch, Tammuz, and other deities. They believed that Jehovah was their national god and that they owed allegiance to him; just as the subjects of an earthly king profess their loyalty to him without denying the existence of other kings.
John E. Remsburg
Who are you?" I asked."You know who I am," he replied. "I'm yours."~Clea / Sage, pg. 105
Hilary Duff
I love the unabashed over-buttered, over-creamed, deep-fried, gooey, over-sugared excessiveness of Amish food,
Blaize Clement
The Truth: Doing it all is a misconception the enemy wants mothers to believe. Learn how to fully embrace the beauty of each season of your life. It is a gift from God. God’s Word: Colossians 3:23-24-'Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.' Take a deep breath busy mom. You are doing a great job!
Tamara L. Chilver
I like the dreams for the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
High PastureCome up--come up: in the dim vale belowThe autumn mist muffles the fading trees,But on this keen hill-pasture, though the breezeHas stretched the thwart boughs bare to meet the snow,Night is not, autumn is not--but the flowOf vast, ethereal and irradiate seas,Poured from the far world's flaming boundariesIn waxing tides of unimagined glow.And to that height illumined of the mindhe calls us still by the familiar way,Leaving the sodden tracks of life behind,Befogged in failure, chilled with love's decay--Showing us, as the night-mists upward wind,How on the heights is day and still more day.
Edith Wharton
Some people are street-smart, some people are book-smart, but most people are just dumber than dirt.
Lois Greiman
It is possible to refine awareness itself so much that the emptiness of things, and the role mental construction plays, becomes a directly apprehended reality.
Jay Michaelson
Ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose.
Frank Tyger
The fossil record implies trial and error, the inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with a Great Designer (though not a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament.)
Carl Sagan
Which side was I on? There was no time to search for answers. All I could do now was ride on a werewolf's back, toward a destiny as hidden as the dark side of the moon.
Neal Shusterman
We must affirm freedom and responsibility without denying that we are the product of circumstance, and must affirm that we are the product of circumstance without denying that we have the freedom to transcend that causality to become something which could not even have been provisioned from the circumstances which shaped us.
Allen Wheelis
7.t“When a foundation is built following sound structural principles, with solid, high-quality materials, anything that is layered on top is more secure, durable, and resilient. Your integrity works the same way.
Susan C.Young
You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.
Lauren DeStefano
The Admiral so regrets failure, he cannot THINK of success.
John Taliaferro
Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want another.
Maggie Stiefvater
I feel like I’m going to get in a fight one day about the validity of falling in love so fast. Not a heated one because why would I give a shit if some other person gets it or not? Right now, it’s no longer the big flooding rush like when I saw her naked shoulder. It’s just this honest, frank truth. I love Evelyn Shriner. Love doesn’t start with need. Love meets love and just fucking recognizes itself. I’m supposed to be scared to death. Modern man isn’t built for these kinds of things. But I feel good.
Gregory Sherl
Boys are unpredictable. This maybe not be news, but I'm starting to think it's one of the best things about them.
Kate Brian
If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.
James Baldwin
Who upholds the gorsedd if not You? Who counts the ages of the world if not You? Who commands the Wheel of Heaven if not You? Who quickens life in the womb if not You? Therefore, God of All Virtue and Power, sain us and shield us with Your Swift Sure Hand.
Stephen R. Lawhead
God isn’t finished with you when you retire! When we know Christ, we never retire from His service.
Billy Graham
I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.
Zora Neale Hurston
When deciding whether or not to go for your dream, remember that you don't need a bigger net, you just need bigger wings.
Sheri Fink
Be so good they can't ignore you.
Steve Martin
We enjoy the sense of God’s presence in the midst of suffering here and now. I have talked to people who are experiencing deep pain or severe difficulties, and they have said, “I feel God is so close to me.
Billy Graham
Always remember to smile and look up at what you got in life.
Marilyn Monroe
This world tainted everything it touched, and nothing good was left—could be left – beneath its menacing gaze.
Cassandra Giovanni
There are seasons when to be still demands immeasurably higher strength than to act.
Margaret Bottome
If we found a ticket to Disneyland would you think we should arrest Mickey Mouse?
Diane L. Randle
I stepped from Plank to PlankSo slow and cautiouslyThe Stars about my Head I felt,About my Feet the Sea.I knew not but the nextWould be my final inch —This gave me that precarious GaitSome call Experience.
Emily Dickinson
My vision of the gathered church that had come to me... had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on... It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.
Wendell Berry
What strikes me now as the most wonderful proof of my fitness, or unfitness, for the times is the fact that nothing people were writing or talking about had any real interest for me. Only the object haunted me, the separate, detached, insignificant thing. It might be a part of the human body or a staircase in a vaudeville house; it might be a smokestack or a button I had found in the gutter. Whatever it was it enabled me to open up, to surrender, to attach my signature. To the life about me, to the people who made up the world I knew, I could not attach my signature. I was as definitely outside their world as a cannibal is outside the bounds of civilized society. I was filled with a perverse love of the thing-in-itself - not a philosophic attachment, but a passionate, desperately passionate hunger, as if in this discarded, worthless thing which everyone ignored there was contained the secret of my own regeneration.
Henry Miller
When a marriage fails, the story of the relationship changes. The best parts, the parts that made you think getting married was a good idea, fade from memory.
Tori Spelling
Unfortunately, the ten-cent-store Jesus being preached now by many men is not the Jesus that will come to judge the world. This plastic, painted Christ who has no spine and no justice, but is a soft and pliant friend to everybody, if He is the only Christ, then we might as well close our books, bar our doors and make a bakery or garage out of our church buildings. The popular Christ being preached now is not the Christ of God nor the Christ of the Bible nor the Christ we must deal with finally. For the Christ that we deal with has eyes as a flame of fire. And His feet are like burnished brass; and out of His mouth cometh a sharp two-edged sword (see Rev. 1:14-16). He will be the judge of humanity. You can leave your loved ones in His hands knowing that He Himself suffered, knowing that He knows all, no mistakes can be made, there can be no miscarriage of justice, because He knows all that can be known... Jesus Christ our Lord, the judge with the flaming eyes, is the one with whom we must deal. We cannot escape it.
A.W. Tozer
In the middle of a grocery store, two children were horsing around (one holding the other in a headlock) when the mother turned abruptly to give them a stern repr
Richelle E. Goodrich
I know you're competent and your thesis advisor knows you're competent. The question in our minds is are you really serious about what you're doing?"This was said to a young woman who had already spent five years and over $10,000 getting to that point in her Ph.D. program.
Joanna Russ
The reason placing blame repeatedly fails to work is that I repeatedly place it on everyone else instead of where it actually belongs.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When you open yourself up to people, you show them where to put the knife in.
Bryan Way
We should never wait for science to give us permission to do the uncommon; if we do, then we are turning science into another religion.
Joe Dispenza
I wished I had told her what I was doing. I wished I had said more, argued more. Maybe then I wouldn't have this hollow ache in my chest whenever I thought of our parting words. Had she already moved on, forgotten me? In her position, what she said made sense, but the thought of her with someone else made me wish I had something to fight, to kill, just so I could forget.
Julie Kagawa
Break my heart for what breaks yours. Everything I am for you kingdom's cause, as I walk from nothing to eternity.
Kiera Cass
Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.
Daniel Quinn
Why do you cry?""I almost lost you...""You cannot lose me, not when you are part of me...You cannot lose has become part of you.
Christine Warren
What's real and what's not? People we meet in books--Holden Caulfield, Captain Ahab, Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter, Bilbo and Gandalf and Frodo-- can become more memorable, and more important to us than people with birth certificates and drivers' licenses. Characters spawned in an author's imagination find a home inside us. They make our lives richer. They become our best friends. They never disappoint. And they never die.
Michael R. French
...very lonely and, often, very unhappy, with the poignant misery that comes to lonely people who long to be social and cannot, somehow, step naturally and unselfconsciously into some friendly group
Shirley Jackson
In all tests of character, when two viewpoints are pitted against one another, in the final analysis the thing that will strike you the most, is not who was right or wrong, strong or weak, wise or foolish.... but who would go to the greatest lengths in considering the other's perspective.
Mike Dooley
Look for patterns, and then ask why those patterns exist.
Debra Kaye
You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing.
Gene Wolfe