Quotes by American Authors - Page 2847

If you can't be real and firm with others about who you are, you will be doomed to a phony, plastic bullshit existence, where you only live for others.
Bryant McGill
I think deeply about things and want others to do likewise. I work for ideas and learn from people. I don’t like excluding people. I’m a perfectionist, but I won’t let that get in the way of publication. Except for education and entertainment, I’m not going to waste my time on things that won’t have an impact. I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don’t take me seriously. I don’t hold grudges, it’s not productive, but I learn from my experience. I want to make the world a better place.
Aaron Swartz
Becoming a man means doing the right thing even though it may be hard or difficult. Boys do what is easiest. A man does what is right, whether easy or not.
Carew Papritz
Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. ... We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children .... [p. 15]
Diane Ackerman
I looked at what he built, and to me it explained the stars.
Stephen King
I think I'm smart, and I know I was a good mom. But there wasn't a lot I could point to and say, that's why I'm special.
Charles Duhigg
Some miners’ wives take in washing and make more money than their husbands do. In every gold rush from this one to the Klondike, the suppliers and service industries will gather up the dust while ninety-nine per cent of the miners go home with empty pokes.
John McPhee
Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.
Timothy J. Keller
It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.
Ursula K Le Guin
All during that prison time I really lived by prayer. Be in prayer always, we're told, and back then I was.
Diet Eman
If oppression produced saints, we’d want everyone to be oppressed.
Christopher Bram
A change of attitude is the one change that changes everything
Toni Sorenson
Don't be ungrateful. Just open it.
Alice Clayton
Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing.
Theodore Roosevelt
You must look through an opportunity and not at it.
Mayur Ramgir
Your level of ignorance is based on what you believe you know and your ego.
Kemi Sogunle
I hate my left hand. I hate to look at it. I hate it when it stutters and trembles and reminds me that my identity is gone. But I look at it anyway; because it also reminds me that I'm going to find the boy who took everything away from me. I'm going to kill the boy who killed me, and when I kill him, I'm going to do it with my left hand.
Katja Millay
I don't believe there is such a thing as unanswered prayer. There is misguided prayers, selfish prayers, and doubting prayers, but true prayer doesn't go unanswered - it is merely abandoned prematurely due to lack of persistence and faithful endurance.
Leslie Ludy
You might say that S. has only himself to blame, that it is entirely his choice to fight this fight, to live a life of vigilant somnolence or somnolent vigilantism, to allow himself to be satisfied with Sola in the margins of his manuscripts instead of in his arms, and you might be right. But you ought to understand, too, that there's an attrition that takes place inside, one in which options and choices and even desires are ground ever smaller until finally their existence can no longer be confirmed by observation or weight or displacement but only by faith. Until desire is a ghost.
Doug Dorst
... I will say this. Marriage is work. It's hard work. Harder than anything else you'll ever do. Believe me, I know. And do you want to know why?' James nodded and Ben Latrobe leaned forward as if to impart a deep, mysterious secret. 'Because marriage isn't about the wedding or the wedding trip afterward. It isn't about cozy nights spent in each other's arms or the way she makes you feel when she smiles. Oh, those things all have a part in it, but a very minor one. No, James, marriage is about sticking it out when it isn't so nice. Marriage is being there to pick up the pieces when your perfect world falls apart. It's seeing the mess you've made of things and being willing to work through it until you have created something better than you had before. It's listening to her fears, her troubles, and concerns. It's eating meals that don't taste as good as those your mother fixed, enduring her temperamental outburts and tears, and not giving up when things get hard.' Latrobe paused for a moment and a frown lined his face where the smile had been only moments before. 'True love is standing by your mate when his health fails, along with his business.' ... 'It's knowing that the world goes on and you can depend on each other even when everything else around you lies in ruins at your feet...
Judith Pella
...how impossible itis to really make a choice, when the best choice of all is an option youcouldn’t even imagine.
Laurie J. Marks
Charm is simply a matter of being yourself. Your uniqueness is your power.
Keith Ferrazzi
Playing is a game. Love is an act. Don't pretend to love someone when all you plan to do is play. Love is not a game. It is a lifetime commitment.
Kemi Sogunle
Ethically, she couldn't cause the suffering of any living thing. Logically, bacon cheeseburgers were delicious.
Thomm Quackenbush
The Indians, keeping to themselves, laughed at your superior methods and lived from the land more abundantly and with less labor than you did... And when your own people started deserting in order to live with them, it was too much... So you killed the Indians, tortured them, burned their villages, burned their cornfields... But you still did not grow much corn.
Edmund S. Morgan
The thing about living alone is that it gives you a lot of time to think. You don't necessarily reach any conclusions, because wisdom is largely a function of intelligence and self-awareness, not time on your hands. But you do become very good at thinking yourself into endless loops of desperation in half the time it would take a normal person.
Jonathan Tropper
Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
William Stafford
Uncommon solutions can always overcome problems of the most common or uncommon kind if I am sufficiently committed to overcoming them.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It was long past midnight. Laura's music played on. It was composed in the language of stars, tinkling in a crystal pool suspended from constellations. She used chimes now and then, the chimes that characterized every patio in Arizona, the piano, the trees combed by wind. A prelude to a storm. It was like discovering the secret room in a dream of your house that holds all the magic. It was music I wished I lived inside. Around us, cactus, hills filled with jumping cholla, the heat of August like another animal heaving over us.
Hannah Lillith Assadi
I don’t know if this happens in all relationships, but I just got so sick of his all too familiar stories. I had heard these stories so many times that I could have recited them myself.
Brenda Perlin
The only way to make a great thought great is to share it.
Toni Sorenson
Being human is a portal into your divinity,
Renae A.Sauter
When inside of her, he’s beside himself.
Crystal Woods
My grandfather would pet the dog, and, in a voice that made him sound like some kind of children's program puppet, he would say: "You're a dog! You're a dog! Where are you? You're a dog!" and the dog's tongue would drop out of its mouth and it would start keening. After a few hours of this, I said, "Jesus Grandpa, I get it, he's a dog," not knowing that, just a few years later, I would be reminding every dog I met on the street that it was a dog, and asking it where it was.
Téa Obreht
Summer turns and marches away, fed up with being handled like a child. Like she’s a glass doll that might break at any minute. She hasn’t been a child since the day she was whipped into muteness. Anxiety might strangle her sometimes, but she’s not some baby needing to be coddled.
Laura Kreitzer
This world does not exist to you when you are missing.
Debasish Mridha
Jesus Christ came not to condemn you but to save you, knowing your name, knowing all about you, knowing your weight right now, knowing your age, knowing what you do, knowing where you live, knowing what you ate for supper and what you will eat for breakfast, where you will sleep tonight, how much your clothing cost, who your parents were. He knows you individually as though there were not another person in the entire world. He died for you as certainly as if you had been the only lost one. He knows the worst about you and is the One who loves you the most. If you are out of the fold and away from God, put your name in the words of John 3:16 and say, “Lord, it is I. I’m the cause and reason why Thou didst on earth come to die.” That kind of positive, personal faith and a personal Redeemer is what saves you. If you will just rush in there, you do not have to know all the theology and all the right words. You can say, “I am the one He came to die for.” Write it down in your heart and say, “Jesus, this is me—Thee and me,” as though there were no others. Have that kind of personalized belief in a personal Lord and Savior.
A.W. Tozer
You can overspend money but you never can over spend love, so spend it without any thought.
Debasish Mridha
Patch's eyes made a slow assessment of me, sharpening to vivid black. "I'm going to have a hard time sending you off with Scott in that dress. Just a heads-up: If you come home and the dress looks even slightly tampered with, I will track Scott down, and when I find him, it won't be pretty.
Becca Fitzpatrick
If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea;If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can’t you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb;And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
Joseph Smith Jr.
Black Girls… Strive to be a woman of substance! Don’t solely allow your big butt, thick thighs, wide hips, large breasts, and overall good looks to define you as a woman. Your looks alone shouldn’t define who you are. What more do you have to offer? What is your TRUE character? How is your attitude? What have you accomplished? Do you have respect for yourself? What do you represent? Everywhere you look, there’s another beautiful, stunning, fine looking sista. Stand out from the rest and dare to be different! Your good looks should only be a bonus, not the main factor. #RealTalk
Stephanie Lahart
Many times you will fail. That is the nature of the world, and the truth of life. But when you find your horse again, will go back or will you go forward?
Robert McCammon
...ordinary experience has to be made extraordinary in order to become accessible to reflection.
Shoshana Zuboff
A quality education prepares you to make a living, make better choices, and have more doors open as you build a solid life.
Susan C.Young
Wit has truth in it wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
Dorothy Parker
Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.
Robert Benchley
How could she have gone from the most exhilarating thing that has ever happened in her life to a moment filled with pure humiliation? She tries to conjure up the light that skipped in her veins earlier when Charles held her. But it only fades in the familiar darkness.
Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn
Do I have to give you hair torture to get it out of y
Jennifer Lane
The Luidaeg sighed and put her arms around me, pulling me close. "Come here," she said. "I need to hold someone, and you need to be held. It's a fair trade. Just for a little while, and then we can go on being what we are." I thought about objecting, but dismissed the idea and nestled against her, enjoying the feeling of security given by knowing someone bigger and stronger than I was would stop anything from hurting me. That's all childhood is, after all: strong arms to hold back the dark, a story to keep the shadows dancing, and a candle to mark the long journey into day. A song to keep the flights of angels at bay. How many miles to Babylon? Sorry. I don't care.
Seanan McGuire
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves unable to see that here now this very moment is sacred but once it's gone-its value is incontestable.
Joyce Carol Oates
I'm an open book. But some of the pages are stuck together.
Kelli Jae Baeli
I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.
Kenneth Rexroth
Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can’t make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning—much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes (even) business sense.
Peter Koestenbaum
My mother had told me once when I was little and had a friendship fall apart that some relationships just end. Like a star, they burn bright and brilliant, and then nothing in particular goes wrong, they just reach their end.
Cora Carmack
Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.
Maxine Hong Kingston
Creative people, especially those who are just starting out, feel that they have to conform and be a mass-produced product in order to be noticed. The truth of the matter is that genuineness and unconventionality is often what helps make a mark on the world.
Veronika Carnaby
There is but a gentle stillness inside every cerebral. Tiny waterfalls of blood vessels rushing, becoming lethal.
Justin Bienvenue
Lydia is enduring the same fate, I may remind you." Vincent remarked. "And she is doubtless freezing, being forced to stand there in only her chemise." A rakish smile spread across his features. "Perhaps we could go down and have a peek."Rafe scowled. "I don't want you looking at my woman." Vincent folded his arms and glared. "Well, I don't want you looking at my woman!
Brooklyn Ann
Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
David M. Burns
He looked upon this verdant, blossoming spring, a spring Joanna would never see, he looked upon a field of brilliant blue flowers- the bluebells Joanna had so loved- and at that moment he'd willingly have bartered all his tomorrows for but one yesterday.
Sharon Kay Penman