Quotes by American Authors - Page 3050

When you grow and rise above the masses, you will always become a target. Just as the flower grows above the grass, it becomes a target for the nourishment of the rays of sunshine, it also becomes a target to be cut down.
Sumner Davenport
I have a mental illness, but that doesn't stop me from being mentally capable.
Lisa M. Cronkhite
Well,’ you may ask, ‘how may I know when I am in love?’. . . George Q. Morris [who later became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, gave this reply]: ‘My mother once said that if you meet a girl in whose presence you feel a desire to achieve, who inspires you to do your best, and to make the most of yourself, such a young woman is worthy of your love and is awakening love in your heart.
David O. McKay
Own your mistakes. Even when you’re in the process ofscrewing up.
Amber Hurdle
For many citizens, libraries are the one place where the information they need to be engaged in civic life is truly available for free, requiring nothing more than the time to walk into a branch. The reading room of a public library is the place where a daily newspaper, a weekly newsmagazine, and a documentary film are all available for free. In many communities, the library's public lecture room is the only place to hear candidates for office comparing points of view or visiting professors explaining their work on climate change, immigration or job creation. That same room is often the only place where a child from a family without a lot of money can go to see a dramatic reading or a production of a Shakespeare play. (Another of these simple realities in most communities is that a big part of public librarians job is to figure out how to host the community's homeless in a safe and fair manner.) Democracies can work only if all citizens have access to information and culture that can help them make good choices, whether at the voting booth or in other aspects of public life.
John Palfrey
You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.
Criss Jami
Time will take everything away from life, so why are we not giving something away with time?
Debasish Mridha
I don't care if the New York Times writes an obituary for me. I just want you to write one. ... You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you.
John Green
Moral obligations verses Legal obligations. Legally, you must abide by the laws of the land or face the consequences of being fined, imprisoned or both. Moral obligations tend to lean more towards a spiritual nature of a person. Some people perform immoral acts because legally there are no consequences. Morals birth in the heart of the individual. Moral characteristics are developed at an early age and continue into adulthood. It's a disgrace to neglect having good moral character.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant, even as we're eating shit.
Jessica Valenti
I have learned the junk equation. Junk is not, like alcohol or weed, a means of increased enjoyment of life. Junk is not a kick. It is a way of life.
William S Burroughs
If you let conditions stop you from working, they'll always stop you.
James T. Farrell
She understood him with the knowing and not-knowing that comes of being a child. When you focus on your parent as if they are the center of the earth, that thing on which your survival depends, only later do you realize their flaws, their scars, and their weaknesses.
Scott Cawthon
It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.
Pat Conroy
I'm delighted to tell you that Jesus Christ offers complete and total forgiveness to anyone who will repent and believe on His name. ...There are no sins that He cannot cleanse, and He's promised that they will be gone forever.
James C. Dobson
Clever women are hard to intimidate.
Jeffrey Perren
We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents.
Bob Ross
Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.
Robert G. Ingersoll
ANDREW: But do you think there’s a line? You know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?FLETCHER: No. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.
Damien Chazelle
I am loved and held by a benevolent universe of love and bliss for all time.
Amy Leigh Mercree
Dare to love yourselfas if you were a rainbowwith gold at both ends.
Aberjhani
I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. p60
Chuck Klosterman
As I walk through the redwood trees, my sneakers sopping up days of rain, I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes, when grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.
Jandy Nelson
When I see God I see Beauty, I see Love, I see Joy, I see Peace and I see You. God loves us let us love one another.
E'yen A. Gardner
It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.
Albert Einstein
I think that in our earlier history--the Gettysburg Address or something--there was the conscious sense that democracy was an achievement. It was not simply the most efficient modern system or something. It was something that people collectively made and they understood that they held it together by valuing it.
Marilynne Robinson
No man should live longer than his teeth.
George R.R. Martin
If freedom, democracy, and the rights of man are to be preserved through the ages, free men and women must accept the responsibilities that go with their freedoms.
Ronald Reagan
The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts and lawyers of this country will not do their duty, we shall watch as the victims and survivors of this man pursue justice and vindication in their own dignified and painstaking way, and at their own expense, and we shall be put to shame.
Christopher Hitchens
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain
Maybe that's how it starts. You stumble upon something that helps you cope, fills a void. Makes you feel something different than what you currently feel. You know in the long run it probably won't be good for you, but you do it anyway. Tell yourself you can handle it.
Tracey Garvis-Graves
If God rewards the faithful with earthly rewards, then what leverage does the devil have?
James Rozoff
I was wounded by a blow of love.
Tom Spanbauer
Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become." -Steve Jobs
Shirley A. Aaron
The process of miraculous change is twofold.  One:  I see my error or dysfunctional pattern.  Two: I ask God to take it from me.  The first principle without the second is impotent.  As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, your best thinking got you here.  You're the problem but you're not the answer. The second principle isn't enough to change us either. The Holy Spirit can't take from us what we will not release to him.  He won't work without our consent.  He cannot remove our character defects without our willingness, because that would be violating our free will.  We chose those patterns, however mistakenly, and he will not force us to give them up.  In asking God to heal us, we're committing to the choice to be healed.
Marianne Williamson
It was just over a year ago. Twelve months, nine days and six hours ago, actually. But thirteen months ago everything was...perfect.
Sarah Ockler
My wolf was a cute guy and he was holding my hand. I could die happy.
Maggie Stiefvater
She wants another spin on the wheel of fortune? This was always my problem with her: I could never tell the difference between the feeling of love and the feeling of danger.
Scott Hutchins
Of course God does outrageous things. But in reality, what insanity would prompt me to follow a God who did anything less?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Ironically, to my children, bedtime is a punishment that violates their basic rights as human beings. Once the lights are out, you can expect at least an hour of inmates clanging their tin cups on the cell bars.
Jim Gaffigan
But really, aren't there bits of magic everywhere we look?' Dr. Clifton continues. 'We've just stopped seeing it that way.
Emily Bain Murphy
Life is a precious gift, but we realize this only when we are in the end. Change it.
Ronald Peret
[There are] seven gifts God gives you when you commit your life to Christ: a new relationship, a new citizenship, a new family, a new purpose, a new power, a new destiny, and a new journey.
Billy Graham
Good morning, daddy!Ain't you heardThe boogie-woogie rumbleOf a dream deferred?Listen closely:You'll hear their feetBeating out and beating out a -You thinkIt's a happy beat?Listen to it closely:Ain't you heardsomething underneathlike a -What did I say?Sure,I'm happy!Take it away!Dream BoogieHey, pop!Re-bop!Mop!Y-e-a-h!
Langston Hughes
I was done with hesitation. It wasn't just that we'd run out of options, or that so much was riding on the firebird's power. I'd simply grown ruthless enough or selfish enough to take another creature's life. But I missed the girl who had shown the stag mercy, who had been strong enough to turn away from the lure of power, who had believed in something more. Another casualty of this war.
Leigh Bardugo
Evil must always be fought.
Patricia Briggs
Thus, we knew at the onset of the sexual revolution back in 1968 that this day of disease and promiscuity would come. It is here, and what we do with our situation will determine how much we and our children will suffer in the future. God created the moral basis for the universe before He made the heavens and the earth. His concept of right and wrong was not an afterthought that came along with the Ten Commandments. No, it was an expression of God’s divine nature and was in force before “the beginning.
James C. Dobson
We first become salesmen as children in the confession booths of our parents.
Criss Jami
The less evidence we have for what we believe is certain, the more violently we defend beliefs against those who don't agree.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
We've got so much in this life that all we know how to do is want more. So we concentrate on the wrong things--things we can see--as being the measure of a person. We think if we win something big or buy something snazzy it'll make us more than we are. Our hearts know that's not true, but the eyes are powerful. It's easier to fix on what we can see than listen to the still, small voice of a whispering heart.
Joan Bauer
One of the joys of heaven . . . will be discovering the hidden ways that God in His sovereignty acted in our lives on earth to protect and guide us [that we might] bring glory to His name, in spite of our frailty.
Billy Graham
Yes, Bastille. I keep trying to get killed because it's inconvenient for you.
Brandon Sanderson
You know what I wish? I wish I could put time in a bottle and throw it into the ocean. Then I would have forever to spend with you. I wouldn’t need air to breathe or food to eat. Holding you in my arms would be all the food I would need. Having your love would be the only air I would need to breathe.
Lynn Austin
Annabeth looked at me. " We have to get out of here." " You think I want to be in the girls' restroom?" " I mean the ship, Percy! We have to get off the ship." " Smells bad," Tyson agreed. " And dogs eat all the eggs. Annabeth is right. We must leave the restroom and the ship.
Rick Riordan
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
What I am doing is not giving religion respect that it wants but it doesn't deserve. I respect people; I respect humans. I do not respect religion. And I do not respect the idea that religion deserves respect. ["Atheist organizer takes ‘movement’ to nation’s capital", Belief Blog (CNN), 23 March 2012]
David Silverman
I'll think of you, just like I promised.""And I'll think of you, just like I have every day," Tamani said.
Aprilynne Pike
Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it is gone. But sometimes--always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate--there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the heart's joy at being in love; or possibly, it may come to crown some other grand festival in life, if any other such there be. This bemoaning of one's self. . . over the first, careless, shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness at youth regained,--so much deeper and richer than that we lost,--are essential to the soul's development. In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously, and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
If you don't feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?
Chris Heimerdinger
In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it is in prose where you find things being put together well, where there is great ambition, and equal talent. Poets have gotten so careless, it is a disgrace. You can’t pick up a page. All the words slide off.
William H. Gass