Quotes by American Authors - Page 277

The soul is the weariest part of the body.
Paul Bowles
What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them, for they are badly posed, but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we can create the conditions for human flourishing in this life--the only life of which any of us can be certain. That means we should not terrify our children with thoughts of hell or poison them with hatred for infidels. We should not teach our sons to consider women their future property or convince our daughters that they are property even now. And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with bloody magic and will end with bloody magic in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest.
Sam Harris
I don't care what you have done in the past or will do in the future, I will still love you forever.
Debasish Mridha
That bodies should be lent us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist us in acquiring knowledge, or doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God - when they become unfit for these purposes and afford us pain instead of pleasure-instead of an aid, become an encumbrance and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way.
Benjamin Franklin
The fact is I'm in a serious jam.
Katie Crouch and Grady Hendrix
The fate of all things cherished and expensive, to be lost at hazard, and well before their time
Stephanie Barron
Prayer is talking to God… but it’s so much more than that… it’s the beat of our heart, the attitude of our mind, the song on our tongue, the direction of our thoughts…
Katie Kiesler
The lack of culpability of the perpetrator and his or her transference of blame onto alcohol or other substances only perpetuates the violent behaviors.
Asa Don Brown
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
Peter F Drucker
There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.
Albert Jay Nock
Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. "Never mock a tender heart," he said.
Orson Scott Card
We can hope.
Margaret Peterson Haddix
God has privileged us, in Christ Jesus, to live above the "Ordinary" human plane of life. We are the head and not the tail, above and not beneath!
Pazaria Smith
Nothing is sweeter than being unapologetically you. Don't live your life just to impress others. Reveal your truth, Express your love, Live your dreams.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Who and what you affiliate your life around will likely determine who you'll become.
Jonathan Anthony Burkett
When your share your story with someone, it becomes their story too.
Marty Rubin
.. questions that had begun to creep into her thoughts whenever they we're together. When would he be ready? Would he ever be ready? And of course, why he wasn't ready?..
Nicholas Sparks
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.
Norman Mailer
They hate me because I am the worst thing possible. I am the bad mother.But here's a secret: in America there are no good mothers. They simply don't exist. Always, there are a thousand ways to fail at this singularly important job. There are failures of the body and failures of the heart. The woman who is unable to breastfeed is a failure. The woman who screams for the epidural is a failure. The woman who picks up her child late knows from the teacher's cutting glance that she is a failure. The woman who shares her bed with her baby has failed. The woman who steels herself and puts on noise-canceling earphones to erase the screaming of her child the next room has failed just as spectacularly. They must all hang their heads in guilt and shame because they haven't done it perfectly, and motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection.
Nayomi Munaweera
Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
Mark Twain
I’m getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It’s six and you’re not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you’re tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you’re running after him. You’re wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory.I love you, babe.
Paullina Simons
It is one thing to look at a mistreated boat and another to look at a tomb. The silence of the bay seemed more intense. And I could see the glint of the carrion flies.
John D. MacDonald
Anytime the rich and poor combine, we should listen to whoever has the least power. Rich people are conditioned to assess the world through our privileges. The powerful tend to discredit or ignore the marginalized perspective because we can. We are shielded from the effects of a lopsided equation; we reap the benefits, not the losses. We don't mean to do this (or even know we do), but we evaluate other communities through the lens of advantage assuming we know best, have the most to offer. In doing so we unintentionally elevate our perception.
Jen Hatmaker
And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference...
Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Sweets rarely set foot on the avenues. They'd always lived on the street-side of town, where duct tape held everything together and WD-40 stopped the squeaks.
Avery Flynn
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Groucho Marx
… my words are lovewhich willfully parades inits room, refusing to move.
Frank O'Hara
The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.
Will Durant
Little Ann," he calledI spun back, and my heart was crushed by the regret on his face. His arms were crossed. "Don't change too much." With that he looked away, and the manager directed me to the exit.
Wendy Higgins
I had a dream about you last night... Unfortunately, it wasn't a dream.
Amy Sommers
I did not have all the answers. I did not know if I’d deserved God’s grace or wrath, or what would become of me if I ever fled this town.But I did know how to shoot a gun. - Skylla Warden
Rachael Wade
Life is all about priorities. Year after year, day after day, and even minute after minute you have to embrace what is more important and essential for you and not look back. When others don’t understand or admonish you for your choices don’t give it any energy because they are telling you that their wants are more significant than yours.
Carl Henegan
Believe that is cure is possible for you. Discover and heal the underlying causes with a holistic recovery program. Adopt a philosophy based on what is true in the Universe.
Chris Prentiss
Everything is 'just a story'. Tragedy, comedy, end of the world, what ever it's just a story. What matters is making sure it's heard.
Mira Grant
I think you love him more than you can bear.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
He might have hurt me a little,' Atticus conceded, 'but sn, you'll understand folks a little better when you're older. A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr Cunnignham was part of a mob last night, but he ws still a man.Every mob in every little Souhern town is always made up of people you know - doesn't say much for them, does it?''I'll say ot, ' said Jem.'So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it?' said Atticus. 'That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children.
Harper Lee
The bureaucrat is a man who administers things and people, and who relates himself to people as to things.
Erich Fromm
Katherine is the master of anger; she dominates anger. She takes anger in her hands and twists its neck, ripping its head off. She throws anger against the wall and stomps it to death. Her voice rises, it changes, it conjures up ghosts and cusses in a spitting Irish brogue. Then, when she's tapped out empty, she picked anger up between her a thumb and a forefinger and carries it outside and drops it in the trash. On her way back, she scoops up forgiveness like a bouquet, sniffs it deep and arranges it in a vase. She sets forgiveness down, shining in the middle of everything.
Colleen Clayton
Can't be on the front lines fighting a war with the weapons given to you by the enemy.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Rule number one. The good guys always win.Rule number two. If the good guys lose, we play again.
Charles S. Faddis
And so I would like to thank you. You taught me, again and again again and again and again, not to dream of you. And I listened. I am silent. These words are not words of love, but of the silence that will remain when I walk away when this letter is done. I have listened and I do not continue to imagine our love, for it was not love. You were too busy walking a flowered path, and it was my misstep that I thought we had something more than an hour’s fun for you.Thank you, for clarifying for me what love is not.Love is no thing, and nothing is a gift, space is a playground, and time and distance are merely peaks and valleys in the topography of real love.And I would remind you: I am not one of your fans. For I know what I deserve, and it is one who is not afraid of fear. Love does not require this map: it makes its way across the miles. Love does not heed the time; it is not rooted in the months of one or two moons. Love is not bothered by obstacles—they form the high sides to the left and right of this rocky path. This path does not depend upon external signs: love will find its own way.
Waylon H. Lewis
Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands.
Frances Wright
Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn’t to say, of course, that I think women’s sexual choices are intrinsically 'empowered' or 'feminist.' I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting womenis a radical act.
Jessica Valenti
A perfectly evil Devil makes even less sense than a perfect God.
Anne Rice
Questioning How You Perceive LifeBrings You to the Truth.
Cynthia Belmer
A poet is a feeling, sentient being, not a word machine.
Marty Rubin
To develop emotional and erotic intelligence we need to practice enlarging our inner passion at every moment. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in our world, or even how we feel about ourselves in the moment. In fact, the best time to accomplishing something may be when we least feel like trying, because the hopeless part of ourselves most needs the light.
Alexandra Katehakis
​One could have mistakenly assumed that each train could choose its own destination. But there was no choice. The Nazi operator sat in the station booth, his hands on levers and switches, forcing each train along its given path.
Danny M. Cohen
The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point — and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior — smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians.
Thomas Szasz
I fell in love with the expression in his eyes when he looked at me.
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
You must tell Lady Alanna that sometime. I'd do it from a distance.
Tamora Pierce
I'd rather play tennis than go to the dentist. I'd rather play soccer than go to the doctor.I'd rather play Hurk than go to work.Hurk? Hurk? What's Hurk?I don't know, but it must be better than work.
Shel Silverstein
Let the beauty of love bloom like a flower, and then welcome everyone you meet with that flower.
Debasish Mridha
A conscious act grew out of this by the time I began writing stories: getting my distance, a prerequisite of my understanding of human events, is the way I begin work. Just as, of course, it was an initial step when, in my first journalism job, I stumbled into making pictures with a camera. Frame, proportion, perspective, the values of light and shade; all are determined by the distance of the observing eye.
Eudora Welty
The glass candle is meant to represent truth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made in the shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast light wherever he serve, and it is a sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous.
George R.R. Martin
When things are at their blackest, I say to myself, 'Cheer up, things could be worse.' And sure enough, they get worse.
Robert Lynn Asprin
Sometimes I wish I could just be like everyone else my age and not think at all.
Julia Karr
Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals by fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence. Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged but in the creature judging, and when we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.
Orson Scott Card
Trying to change someone, and their views, is like throwing paper into a fire.
Anthony Liccione
It is a fact that the USA corporate government routinely lies to its mass population.
Steven Magee