Quotes by American Authors - Page 323

It's hard to be an articulate ghost.

The highest possible form of treason," said Minton," is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do. Claire tried to make the point that American foreign policy should recognize hate rather than imagine love.

Today I realized that I am nothing more than tomorrow's ghost. In a way, it robs my sense of self to know I'm always changing; at the same time, it provides incentive to have the best today possible so I can have a positive influence on tomorrow and, if need be, shake some sense into the living. (Samantha Green)

The sea can smack the rocks like a hand smacking a cheek. It can hiss or gurgle or even kiss. But when it wants, it can go quiet. 'And then', said Anya Rothrock, 'you can hear the voices of the drowned'.

Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.

The beauty of life depends on how you respond not in how true you answer.

Knowing the future is different from being told what I like.

Sprawled out on the front lawn Looking up at an ordinary sky It could fall on me and somehow be The day I didn't die

Be according to your possibility.

What good is there in being blind, you ask? Well, maybe it's to see the beauty on the inside without being vainly distracted, or superficially blinded, by the ugly on the outside.

There she stood. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her face was pale, almost snow-white. She probably hadn't slept, either. She was still wearing the same dress. Her hair looked like a bomb had gone off. She was beautiful.

You can't move things by not moving.

To agree to a marriage is to consent to a mutual act of transformation, to promise to ensure that the versions of yourselves that you will become will remain in harmony, though you yourselves can never stay the same.

This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.

The TV shouted an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize, wheelchairs facing it like church pews.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen

Get some perspective. A lot of things that may aggravate you only do so because you have the luxury of not wrestling with bigger issues. Today, be thankful for everything you have: being alive, your friends and family, your health, a roof over your head, something to eat, clean water to drink, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning, clothes, shoes, a job, and freedoms. Many, many people have it worse.

Success-minded people need to understand that the best way to learn is to ask questions and listen for answers.

Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it's beautiful?...Simplify, simplify.

Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its grim and beautiful complexity. The poetic eye was always at work examining the nuance and measuring obscure detail, turning conversation into ultimatum (Steiner)

Take all mistakes for love, because there actually are no mistakes.

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.

MAKING THE LIE MAKE SENSE:When denial (his or ours) can no longer hold and we finally have to admit to ourselves that we’ve been lied to, we search frantically for ways to keep it from disrupting our lives. So we rationalize. We find “good reasons” to justify his lying, just as he almost always accompanies his confessions with “good reasons” for his lies. He tells us he only lied because…. We tell ourselves he only lied because…. We make excuses for him: The lying wasn’t significant/Everybody lies/He’s only human/I have no right to judge him.Allowing the lies to register in our consciousness means having to make room for any number of frightening possibilities:•tHe’s not the man I thought he was.•tThe relationship has spun out of control and I don’t know what to do•tThe relationship may be over. Most women will do almost anything to avoid having to face these truths. Even if we yell and scream at him when we discover that he’s lied to us, once the dust settles, most of us will opt for the comforting territory of rationalization. In fact, many of us are willing to rewire our senses, short-circuit our instincts and intelligence, and accept the seductive comfort of self-delusion.

Holy fellatio! You are standing there licking him up with your eyes! Do you freaking hear the old seventies porn music playing in your head?

If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't.

The pendulum has overcorrected from the cruel era of rapping a disobedient child’s knuckles with a ruler togiving every child a trophy for showing up. Every child should have the experience of being loved unconditionally, supported, and encouraged,but this requires more than a standing ovation every time he or she enters the room.

Only when we cease to rely on our own strength can we discover that God's strength is always there for us.

Obliqueness is the curse of the reading class.

I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it's no one's fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child's courage.

Why do you want to fall in love when love is inside you?

...love was the closest thing to immortality that men would ever know and that the only--and best--answer to death is loving. Loving.

The journey of the sun and moon is predictable, but yours is your ultimate art.

It's immeasurably easier to live in a world that's all surfaces, that means nothing and demands nothing of you.

No decision in the world outlives the time, place, and person’s constituents on the basis of which it was made.

Christie: “Even if he is – aren’t you the one who’s always saying we shouldn’t trust the wealthy, that they became that way by walking on the backs of the poor?

Humanity could be clutching the frail barque of an outmoded world view while the wind of the mind is swaying the stars into very real craft, and out of them is coming… a faint call for help from a lady in a flowered dress.

Many modern artists, philosophers, and theologians reject the knowledge of the past. Thus they must continually start over again from ground zero, their vision restricted to their own narrow perspectives, making themselves artificially primitive.

The ideal is the enemy of the real.

All Sam Peckinpah ever did in his movies was show that getting hit on the chin doesn't sound like [makes a small popping noise]. When one grown man hits another grown man in the face, it splatters like an overripe tomato. And it's not fun getting killed. It's bloody and gory and altogether unpleasant. That's all Sam Peckinpah ever did.

Danger is real, fear is a choice

Going into the Republican Party National Convention, in all objective truth, our non‑winning front‑runners are the sorriest collection of stuffed shirts, empty suits, self‑gratulatory ignorami, and outright wig‑flipped ding‑dongs in the history of the Republic.

No one here likes a wet dog.

Recovery is hard. Regret is harder.

I'm half good and I'm half bad. My mama is a very good girl and my daddy is a very bad boy. And I guess that leaves me somewhere sort of...here.

As a boy, Ogion like all boys had thought it would be a very pleasant game to take by art-magic whatever shape one liked, man or beast, tree or cloud, and so to play at a thousand beings. But as a wizard he had learned the price of the game, which is the peril of losing one's self, playing away the truth. The longer a man stays in a form not his own, the greater this peril. Every prentice-sorcerer learns the tale of the wizard Bordger of Way, who delighted in taking bear's shape, and did so more and more often until the bear grew in him and the man died away, and he became a bear, and killed his own little son in the forests, and was hunted down and slain. And no one knows how many of the dolphins that leap in the waters of the Inmost Sea were men once, wise men, who forgot their wisdom and their name in the joy of the restless sea.

Sometimes, I think our lifestyle has become the victim of a “World of Kinkcraft” gamer mentality, where people just want to download a cheat sheet or a step-by-step walk-through. Many newcomers yearn to "learn the rules" of the lifestyle as quickly as possible, so they can get right to "winning the game." These are relationships, people. Real BDSM relationships, involving real people with real feelings, living really complicated lives. If this was easy, everyone would be doing it. Stop looking for shortcuts and easy answers.

No" works just fine as a complete sentence. You don't have to explain yourself.I said no, then stopped talking.

Its Vermeer"Kat turned to the boy who lingered in the doorway. "It's stolen""What can I say?" Hale eased behind her and studied the painting over her shoulder. "I met a very nice man who bet me he had the best security system in Istanbul." His breath was warm on the back of her neck. "He was mistaken.

So whenever that brittle voice of dissatisfaction emerges within me, I can say "Ah, my ego! There you are, old friend!" It's the same thing when I'm being criticized and I notice myself reaching with outrage, heartache, or defensiveness. It's just my ego, flaring up and testing its power. In such circumstances, I have learned to watch my heated emotions carefully, but I try not to take them too seriously, because I know that it's merely my ego that has been wounded--never my soul It is merely my ego that wants revenge, or to win the biggest prize. It is merely my ego that wants to start a Twitter war against a hater, or to sulk at an insult or to quit in righteous indignation because I didn't get the outcome I wanted. "At such times, I can always steady my life one more by returning to my soul. I ask it, "And what is it that you want, dear one?""The answer is always the same: "More wonder, please.""As long as I'm still moving in that direction---toward wonder--then I know I will always be fine in my soul, which is where it counts. And since creativity is still the most effective way for me to access wonder, I choose it.

Shhh.” He put a finger to her lips. “Hear me out. I cannot deny that I would've liked to have made babies with you. A little girl with your hair and eyes would've been the delight of my life. But it is you that I want primarily, not mythical children. I can survive the loss of something I've never had. I cannot survive losing you. (Winter Makepeace)

Since then, he watched the man live his completely stifling life over and over again, one repetitive day at a time. It was so consistent that Roen even complained about the same things at the same times every day.

We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for.Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us.

[at CMC West Coast 2011, on 1 Samuel 14] If just a few of you would step up and be like Jonathan ... as you step out in faith, you know what's going to happen? There'll be people like Saul who'll say, "God's doing something through that guy, God's doing something through that girl. I want to be a part of that.

CAUSE AND EFFECTYou can give a man who has never given you a good word,Volumes of knowledge.And you can give a man who has never given you a gift,A thousand gifts.You can give that same man who has never given you a blessing,A thousand blessings.And you can offer that same man who has neverOffered a hand to help you grow,Seeds to help him grow a garden.And while you have never seen true kindness from his direction,You still offer to help push him up.And in the end,He only wants to be the hand that pulls you down.Do not worry, my friends.Cause and effect was written by the stars of the universe.He who passes suffering onto othersWill also have that suffering passed onto his own children.Gifts he feels he should have in the next lifetime will be unobtainable.And the help he needs to grow in the next lifetime will be unavailable.And the people he cuts down that were good to him,Will cut him down in the next lifetime.What goes around does come back again,Even through your children.There is a vibrational effectIn every action,Just as there isA vibration that ringsFrom every letterIn every word.No cause occurs without effectAnd no effect occurs without cause.No unjust action goes without penaltyAnd no action or thoughtFlows unnoticedThroughoutThe universe.

To be civilized, really, is to be aware of the others, their hopes, their gladnesses, their illusions about life.

Simplicity is a bliss that makes one comprehend.

When it comes to judging individuals, I do not like remarks such as 'too good to be true.' They speak as though one is rewarding the nature of evil. Yet, ironically, we still wonder where all the good people have gone.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the houseNot a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;The children were nestled all snug in their beds;While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.Away to the window I flew like a flash,Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,When what to my wondering eyes did appear,But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,With a little old driver so lively and quick,I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blixen!To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;So up to the housetop the coursers they flewWith the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roofThe prancing and pawing of each little hoof.As I drew in my head, and was turning around,Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;He had a broad face and a little round bellyThat shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;A wink of his eye and a twist of his headSoon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,And laying his finger aside of his nose,And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Hate controls everything it touches, but love sets everything it touches free.

Freedom is a place, an area. It's a higher place. There are some other people that are here, and things that are here which are unseen. But you first have to set yourself free and believe in what you cannot see, believe that there is something more out there. In freedom can be found many devotions: a devotion to love, a desire to believe, a willingness to be happy, a perseverance to have peace. All these unseen things breathe and grow in the unseen soul. A free person is not an uncommitted person, but in a free person you will find a deep devotion, and a desire to be devoted to even more.