Quotes by American Authors - Page 2912

Sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting 'the gospel' is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn't safe, loving, or good. It doesn't make sense, it can't be reconciled, and so they say no.
Rob Bell
The first one to bed always lit the candle, and the last one turned out the lamp....The tradition had seen them through quite a bit by now, and Rebecca had come to love the candlelight, not only because it meant that Mike loved to see her just the way she was, which was incredibly liberating once you began to actually believe it, but also because the light just felt holy to her. It made the end of the day into a kind of prayer, whether they made love or just lay in each other's arms and chewed over the day's portion of craziness; and there was that beautiful little puff of "Amen" when they blew the candle out and settled into sleep.
Tim Farrington
A new baby! Why, Scarlett, this is a surprise!” he laughed, leaning down to push the blanket away from Ella Lorena's small ugly face." - Rhett Butler
Margaret Mitchell
Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear -- and doubt.
H.A. Dorfman
Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. Example: the Chinese pictogram for ‘integrity’ is a two-part symbol of a man literally standing next to his word. So far, so good. But what does the Late English word ‘honesty’ mean? Or ‘Motherland’? Or ‘progress’? Or ‘democracy’? Or ‘beauty’? But even in our self-deception, we become gods.
Dan Simmons
New York is a different country. Maybe it ought to have a separate government. Everybody thinks differently, they just don't know what the hell the rest of the United States is.
Henry Ford
In the garden of humanity every baby is a fresh new flower who can smile, laugh, giggle, dance, love and sing with mother earth.
Debasish Mridha
It is important to refuse to be intimidated. That refusal must not be based simply on a calculation of the odds of succeeding. At times, in my case, multiple lawsuits and an ethics charge seemed overwhelming, and the fact that I knew my work to be accurate and responsible was only partial solace. l was well aware that court, like the National Football League, is an arena in which, on any given Sunday, anybody can win.The refusal to be intimidated must come, in the end, not from a sureness of succeeding but from a knowledge of the cost of scurrying for shelter through fake retractions and disowned truths. It is a question, in the end of self-respect.Who among us could, in good faith, ever face a survivor of childhood abuse again were we to run for cover when pressed ourselves? Children are not permitted that choice, and the adults who choose to work with them and with the survivors they become cannot afford to make it. It would be a choice to become. Through betrayal and deceit, that to which we object.Our alternative, then, is not to hide. Not to refuse to treat adult survivors, not to refuse to go to court in their defense, not to apologize and retract statements we know are true, but to cultivate endurance and tenacity as carefully as we read the research.Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998
Anna C. Salter
When traversing the vast sea of loneliness, Oneness is the only true safe harbor.
Gary Hopkins
Bitter people are not interested in what you say, but what you hide.
Shannon L. Alder
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
George Washington
It is a common enough mid-career urge: having taken care of life's immediate needs, some of us yearn to chase villains, right wrongs, fight on the side of the angels.
Tim Wu
Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it's very important that you do it. Because nobody else will.
Will Fetters
It seemed that everyone else could mate, could fit their parts together in pleasant and productive ways, but that some almost indistinguishable difference in my anatomy and psyche set me slightly, yet irrevocably, apart.
Peter Cameron
I don't lack for bed partners, so I don't need to scrounge for unwilling scraps.-Spade
Jeaniene Frost
I have lived in the shadow of loss—the kind of loss that can paralyze you forever.I have grieved like a professional mourner—in every waking moment, draining every ounce of my life force.I died—without leaving my body.But I came back, and now it’s your turn.I have learned to remember my past—without living in it.I am strong, electric, and alive, because I chose to dance, to laugh, to love, and tolive again.I have learned that you can’t re-create the life you once had—you have toreinvent a life for yourself.And that reinvention is a gift, not a curse.I believe your future self is a work of art and that science can help you create it. If you’re lost . . . if you’re gone . . . if you can barely absorb the words on thispage . . . I want you to hold this truth in your heart: when it’s your time to go, you won’t wish you had spent more time grieving; you’ll wish you had spent more time living.That’s why I’m here. And why you are, too. Let’s live like our lives depend on it.
Christina Rasmussen
I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act.I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.
James Baldwin
if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away
Toni Morrison
The Amen is only as good as the attitude. If you are trying to finish up quickly so you can check your cell phone messages, you are missing the chance to spend quiet moments with the giver of life and the eternal, which means you may reap continued feelings of life racing along without you. So as Samuel Beckett admonished us to fail again, and fail better, we try to pray again, and pray better, for slightly longer and with slightly more honesty, breathing more, deeper, and with more attention.
Anne Lamott
The desire to criticise becomes less and less as the character is developed. It is the mark of a fine character never to be critical and to mention but rarely the faults of others. A strong character does not resist evil, but uses their strength in building the good. They know that when the light is made strong, the darkness will disappear of itself.
Christian D. Larson
If a free people is going to be reproduced, it will require watering and revivifying and owning anew older traditions and awaking the curiosity in the soul of each citizen. National greatness will not be recovered via a mindless expansion of bureaucratized schooling. Seventy years ago, Dorothy Sayers wrote, 'Sure, we demand another grant of money, we postpone the school leaving age and plan to build bigger and better schools. We demand that teachers further slave conscientiously in and out of school hours. But to what end? I believe,' Sayers lamented, 'all this devoted effort is largely frustrated because we have no definable goal for each child to become a fully formed adult. We have lost the tools of learning, sacrificing them to the piecemeal, subject matter approach of bureaucratized schooling that finally compromises to produce passive rather than active emerging adults. But our kids are not commodities, they are plants. They require a protected environment, and care, and feeding, but most basically, an internal yearning to grow toward the sunlight. What we need is the equipping of each child with those lost tools.
Ben Sasse
Shiiiit. Cade weighs a lot. Way more than I thought!” I moaned/sang.
Cora Carmack
To be successful, you must find peace of mind, acquire the material needs of life, and above all, attain happiness. All of these evidences of success begin in the form of thought impulses.
Napoleon Hill
People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can't be fixed.
Rick Riordan
It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.
Madeleine L'Engle
A good leader leads with compassion and love, not fear and blood. A country that harms its people because they are not happy with the leader - is not a country that belongs to the people, but to the leader.
Suzy Kassem
Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.
Joan Didion
Transform us, by your mercy and grace, into children who are more thankful for your kindness, more humble under your correction, more watchful against temptation, more eager to serve you. Give us hearts overflowing with joy in you and lips that boast often of Jesus Christ, our only hope in life and in death.
Barbara R. Duguid
Safe in the sovereignty of the Godhead, we can count on the fact that WE, rather than just our friends, enemies, or circumstances, will be transformed.
Brian Eshleman
i move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don't.
Nikki Giovanni
I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to start this day because then I'll just be expected to finish it.
Rainbow Rowell
It takes a decade to grow a tree, and it takes more than one generation to shape the right mindset.
Pearl Zhu
You may not stop getting older, but you can paint your world with the vibrant colors of love to keep feeling younger.
Debasish Mridha
The last great escape. I was done gambling, done betting on a ship that would never come in. I would cash in my chips while I was ahead. I didn't want to suffer the growing old, didn't want to wait until my memory went. It was all so tiresome. I would just go out in a blaze of glory before the parasites of sadness got at me and made me bitter. After that's the American way: take your own life before everything else takes it from you.
Brian James
Math anxiety is worst than a regular check up at the dentist.
Charmaine J.Forde
Enough, I say. Our guests will be arriving shortly, and I would as lief they were left in the dark about this particular strain of insanity in the family that makes you two revert to childhood at the drop of a napkin.
Kasey Michaels
There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.
Sarah Dessen
All of the answers you seek can be found in the macrocosmic view of the microcosmic You.
Ka Chinery
When you make an embarrassing mistake, learn to let the memories be enough to let you laugh about it today.
Julieanne O'Connor
You can run from the grave, but you can't hide.
Jeaniene Frost
We walk into the rest of our lives together, not knowing it'll end before it's truly started.
Tess Sharpe
Stories start in all sorts of places. Where they begin often tells the reader of what to expect as they progress. Castles often lead to dragons, country estates to deeds of deepest love (or of hate), and ambiguously presented settings usually lead to equally as ambiguous characters and plot, leaving a reader with an ambiguous feeling of disappointment. That's one of the worst kinds.
Rebecca McKinsey
You could continue to repress and think about the life you could have had or you can take what you want from life and see that the world finds that person infinitely more irresistible...
Roberto Hogue
If your career doesn’t work out, write a book about it.
Marcy Sheiner
So remember those who win the gameLose the love they sought to gainIn debitures of quality and dubious integrityTheir small-town eyes will gape at youIn dull surprise when payment dueExceeds accounts received at seventeen
Janis Ian
Peace is always pleasant, always kind.
Debasish Mridha
Make a list of goals for every year, tick them off & reward yourself when you achieve each one. Will give much discipline in your life.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.
Khaled Hosseini
In foreign policy, a modest acceptance of fate will often lead to discipline rather than indifference. The realization that we cannot always have our way is the basis of a mature outlook that rests on an ancient sensibility, for tragedy is not the triumph of evil over good so much as triumph of one good over another that causes suffering. Awareness of that fact leads to a sturdy morality grounded in fear as well as in hope. The moral benefits of fear bring us to two English philosophers who, like Machiavelli, have for centuries disturbed people of goodwill: Hobbes and Malthus.
Robert D. Kaplan
It's a fact that every minute you hold a child, it triples in mass.
Drew Magary
Thankfulness is the quickest path to joy.
Jefferson Bethke
The wind is blowing hard around me, the sound is rising in my chest again, and I feel I can fly.And then the branch has shifted under my feet, the deep furrows of the bark have left my back, and I have no time to spread my arms. I am not flying. I am falling.
Ned Hayes
I was unrecognizable even to family. When Kim saw me she yelled," That's not Amy!" Just before she passed out.
Amy Rankin
Do you know the primary difference between men and gods? ... Gods don’t think they can become men
Dennis Lehane
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ..... a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...
Pamela Redmond Satran
If you follow the rules, it's your own fault.
Marty Rubin
A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.
Lionel Shriver
I know people who are embarrassed to be American. They don't like showing their passports. It's becoming a scary place. It takes someone very brave not to be quiet, someone who doesn't mind death threats, their life being turned upside down, news cameras outside their door. There is no freedom of speech in America anymore. They are not living up to the constitution. There's so much fear in America and control.
Gillian Anderson
Oh and P.S.? I am in dire need of more coffee. Industrial strength.""But we're going to sleep soon," I say."I know." Laila shudders. "Addiction is a bitch.
Susane Colasanti
Those who serve others have purpose. Those who serve themselves are lost.
Chris Matakas