Quotes by American Authors - Page 3005

It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!
Robert T. Kiyosaki
Only when we can accept God as he is can we give up the desire for spiritual experiences that we can feel.
Thomas Keating
The Christmas story is penmanship of the most brilliant sort, where God crafted a beginning that would never be subject to an ending.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Many small businesses would rather face an angry barbarian horde than tackle their cash flow statement or price a new product.
Nicole Fende
I’ve had a lot of lieutenants over the years, and all the good ones were sick, sick individuals. You might be the best one yet.
Henry V. O'Neil
Why are you touchin
Tahereh Mafi
Knowledge can never imprison you, but you can be captive to your ignorance.
A.E. Samaan
The leaders of thought and of action grope theirway forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly,that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of valueonly as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes fromdevotion to loftier ideals.
Theodore Roosevelt
There is no such thing as static happiness. Happiness is a mixed thing, a thing compounded of sacrifices, and losses, and betrayals.
John Updike
Myron lay sprawled next to a knee-knockingly gorgeous brunette clad only in a Class-B-felony bikini, a tropical drink sans umbrella in one hand, the aqua clear Caribbean water lapping at his feet, the sand a dazzling white powder, the sky a pure blue that could only be God's blank canvas, the sun a soothing and rich as a Swedish masseur with a snifter of cognac, and he was intensely miserable.
Harlan Coben
Are people innately altruistic?" is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated--for good or ill--if only you find the right levers.
Steven D. Levitt
There is no such thing as progress or regress. The world is not getting better and better, nor is it getting worse and worse. It is simply moving along into the future, reiterating in different configurations the patterns that have already occurred. We can’t help but play a role in this unfolding drama, but it is a mistake to think that what we do makes any difference to the grand scheme of things.
John Marmysz
To believe in yourself is to light a spark with the potential to start a fire.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I sense pure evil. I see a figure all dressed in black, but I can't make out the face.
Stan Schatt
Without thinking, I knelt in the grass, like someone meaning to pray. When I tried to stand again, I couldn't move,my legs were utterly rigid. Does grief change you like that?Through the birches, I could see the pond.The sun was cutting small white holes in the water.I got up finally; I walked down to the pond. I stood there, brushing the grass from my skirt, watching myself,like a girl after her first loverturning slowly at the bathroom mirror, naked, looking for a sign.But nakedness in women is always a pose.I was not transfigured. I would never be free.
Louise Glück
Focus on the win and you lose the battle, focus on the battle and you win.
Toni Sorenson
I have nightmares about hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you.
Jim Butcher
A dog's good for filling a grief-dug hole.""In the Shape of Shep
Eileen Granfors
For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.'Really,' I said.We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I'm not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother... At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.'To me,' Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, 'family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.'...Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. 'Huh,' she said. 'I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, jsut as you're getting pissed off at another.' So it's an endless cycle,' I said.I guess.' She took another sip. 'Coming together, falling apart. Isn't that what families are all about?
Sarah Dessen
Well, the gold fish in the bowl lay upside down bloatingFull in the sky and the plains were bleached white with skeletonsVarious species grouped together accordingTo their past beliefsThe only way they ever all got together wasNot in love but shameful grief
Don Van Vliet
And in that moment, Grace understood something that she would never forget: Home wasn't just a building or an apartment with a roof and beds and chairs inside. Home was with her family, wherever they were.
Priscilla Cummings
Government was founded on the working premiss of being primarily an asylum for ineptitude and indigence.
William Faulkner
If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson called New York.
o.henry
...I'm a fool. I expect too much, then I'm angry because nothing ever works out the way I want. When I was young and full of hopes and aspirations, I didn't know I would get hurt so often. I think I'll get tough and won't ache again, then my fragile shell shatters, and again, symbolically, my blood is spilled with the tears I shed. I pull myself back together again, go on, convince myself there is a reason for everything, and at some point in my life it will be disclosed. And when I have what I want, I hope to god it stays long enough to let me know I have it, and it wont hurt when it goes, for I don't expect it to stay, not now. I'm like a doughnut, always being punch out in the middle, and constantly I go around searching for the missing piece, and on and on it goes, never ending, only beginning...
V.C. Andrews
Yes, boys are a little like shoes. Why? Well...They can be useful. But mainly...They are nice to look at. Getting the right one can be a lovely accessory to an outfit. There are times when you couldn't do without them. And there are times when you'd rather do without them. Get the wrong ones and they can hurt. There are many types and often the ones that look the nicest are completely unpractical.
Rachel Hill
I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.
Woodrow Wilson
AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that bad cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not.
David Foster Wallace
If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the up button.
Sam Levenson
As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. We strive to be ourselves. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t be firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal...In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he knows he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important.
Hunter S. Thompson
A man's heart does not love like a woman's, Lorelei. Logren would lay down and die if he thought his death would save your life because you are his sister, but his tongue is not so easily guided by his brother's heart.
Jennifer Melzer
1983:To my generation has now come the challenge. In the days to come we will be tested on whether we have the moral courage, the realism, the idealism, the tenacity, and the ability to sacrifice some of the current comfort to invest in the future... I believe that this generation will rise to the challenge... The experts believe that, like the Democratic Party itself, the less than forty-year-old voters are prepared to sell their souls for some security, real or illusory. They have misjudged us. Just because our political heroes were murdered does not mean that the dream does not still live, buried deep in our broken hearts.
Joe Biden
Behind every successful woman, there's a big prick.
James Patterson
On your quest to spirituality it is often required to suspend your rationality but true spirituality asks that you enhance your rationality.
Steve Maraboli
The three children had hear the story of the Duene lovers, but they interpreted it differently. And it does not matter, ultimately, what they heard or even what they knew. It is how they interpret the story that will make all the difference.
Tiphanie Yanique
Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.
Kelly Barnhill
As I read the Gospels, I never saw a time when Jesus was a doormat. Jesus found a perfect balance, and for me it has been an ongoing search to find the line to walk between making people happy and giving up too much in order to do so.
Shawn Michaels
Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.
Nicholas Sparks
He steadied himself by resting one palm on her thigh and the other on the armrest, and rose to his knees. “I’ll be damned.”“Possibly. But not today, I think.
G.S. Jennsen
It was September, and there was a crackly feeling to the air. I was saying something that was making her laugh, and I couldn't stop looking at her. It was a little bit chilly, and her cheeks were pink, and her dark hair was flowing around her face. All I wanted for the rest of my life was to keep making her laugh like that. Sometimes our arms brushed against each other as we walked, and it was like I could feel the touch for minutes after it happened.
Carolyn Parkhurst
The things we share with each other are deeply felt from within our hearts that neither of us will ever forget. For the gifts that are priceless are the ones that are heartfelt; their roots are within our soul. They are the greatest gifts, of all.
Ellen J. Barrier
Rnesh karr slithis," I hissed back, which was Draconic for eat your own tail, the dragon version of go screw yourself. No extra translation needed.
Julie Kagawa
Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.
Michelle Obama
You can win the victories you seek, Jorg. But only if you find better reasons to want them.
Mark Lawrence
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of a God. It...has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Thomas Paine
Wealth is not his that has it but his who enjoys it.
Benjamin Franklin
She opened her eyes to find a strange man above her."Ahh," he sighed. "Your eyes are the color of jade. I imagined them to be dark, like your hair. How strange."She continued to stare at him without a word. His figure loomed over her, and he stared at her with large, black eyes, like those of a bird, she thought. His thin, black hair fell past his chin, making him appear delicate, almost beautiful. His lips curved to a smile."I find you just as beautiful, my dear," he said. His statement shocked her; it was as if he'd read her thoughts."Yes, I know what you think presently, but…." He paused for a moment. "Not all of them. You keep something hidden from me. Hmm, how strange. Very well. It seems you are more interesting than I first thought.""What is it that you want?" she spat out."Oh, please do not start with that nonsense," he chided. "My plans are not for you to know. However, I will assure you that now I have seen you, I plan to keep you, at least for a while.
Jettie Necole
The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other, he understood, but to be with each other.
Christopher McDougall
I was drinking in the surroundings: air so crisp you could snap it with your fingers and greens in every lush shade imaginable offset by autumnal flashes of red and yellow.
Wendy Delsol
Loving people and animals makes us stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die, they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us.
Glennon Doyle Melton
...if George Washington founded the nation, John Marshall defined it.
Jean Edward Smith
When outcomes are uncertain, most of us spend a great deal of energy ruminating, worrying, and second-guessing ourselves. Not only is this a waste of time, but it makes us less likely to succeed
Melanie Greenberg
I would say, then, that you are faced with a future in which education is going to be number one amongst the great world industries.
R. Buckminster Fuller
She'd abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.
Flora Rheta Schreiber
A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence -- often the sole evidence offered -- of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to cope with problems "obviously" required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it "cannot keep its hands off" when so "much is at stake," when emergency "compels" it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of "emergencies" to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions.
Thomas Sowell
Somehow her hula hoop had cut into the driver’s side door like the vehicle was made of cheese.
Nathan Reese Maher
Live, Princess, for me. I love You
Molly McAdams
Procrastination usually results in sorrowful regret. Today's duties put off until tomorrow give us a double burden to bear the best way is to do them in their proper time.
Ida Scott Taylor
The rest of us need you to act, because if you don't, you're robbing yourself, your peers, your family, your organization, and the world of a contribution that only you can make.
Todd Henry
I don't desire a change of scenery or exotic experiences. My heart yearns for familiarity, stability, the comfort of home- and my sanity depends on it.
Dean Koontz
The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind...
Gabrielle Zevin