Quotes by American Authors - Page 3289

When comfort and ease and pleasure are put ahead of duty and conviction, progress is always set back.
Billy Graham
I wasn't good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.
Alice Hoffman
Lady, I was gonna cut you some slack, 'cause you're a major mythological figure...but now you've just gone nuts!
Mike Mignola
Better a long ignoble life of shallow pleasures than a short stab at heroism, ending with a short stab. And just because one man plays another doesn’t always mean that it’s not the right direction for both of them.
Mark Lawrence
Nothing is lost that love remembers.
Kate McGahan
The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.
Abigail Van Buren
Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.
Maya Angelou
That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.
Lauren Oliver
Everything from quarks to quasars, butterflies to brain cells, was created so that you and I might delight in the display of divine glory. We alone can glorify God by rejoicing in the beauty His creative handiwork and relishing the splendor of His-revelation in the Person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
Kelly Monroe Kullberg
Matthew once said to me, after one of my more finely worded rants about stupid people who have the wrong opinions, "Nadia, the thing that sucks is that every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it." Damn.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Both friend and enemy reside within us. One lives by the rule of compassion, the other by the rule of hard knocks. Though potential influence of either extreme is inevitable, our actions bear witness to the one we embrace.
T.F. Hodge
This time of year, the purple blooms were busy with life- not just the bees, but butterflies and ladybugs, skippers and emerald-toned beetles, flitting hummingbirds and sapphire dragonflies. The sun-warmed sweet haze of the blossoms filled the air."When I was a kid," said Isabel, "I used to capture butterflies, but I was afraid of the bees. I'm getting over that, though." The bees softly rose and hovered over the flowers, their steady hum oddly soothing. The quiet buzzing was the soundtrack of her girlhood summers. Even now, she could close her eyes and remember her walks with Bubbie, and how they would net a monarch or swallowtail butterfly, studying the creature in a big clear jar before setting it free again. They always set them free.As she watched the activity in the hedge, a memory floated up from the past- Bubbie, gently explaining to Isabel why they needed to open the jar. "No creature should ever be trapped against its will," she used to say. "It will ruin itself, just trying to escape." As a survivor of a concentration camp, Bubbie only ever spoke of the experience in the most oblique of terms.
Susan Wiggs
You're only responsible for being honest, not for someone else's reaction to your honesty.
Kelli Jae Baeli
Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.
Criss Jami
Well. If you are worried about the effects of feminism and you are a man, it's probably because you are worried that men will start to be treated like women have been treated since the dawn of time. By this I mean worse, which makes you nervous, no doubt.
Alida Nugent
Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul...
Emily Dickinson
I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.
Louis L'Amour
Your professional physicist opinion?" I ask.She smiles. "I believe the cat to be alive. And what says my esteemed colleague?""Alive," I say.
John Green
Instead of just recording reality photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.
Susan Sontag
She held the moth to the light. It was nearer brown than yellow,and she remembered having seen some like it in the boxes that afternoon.It was not the one needed to complete the collection,but Elnora might want it,so Mrs. Comstock held on. Then the Almighty was kind,or nature was sufficient,as you look at it,for following the law of its being when disturbed,the moth again threw the spray by which some suppose it attracts its kind,and liberally sprinkled Mrs. Comstock's dress front and arms. From that instant,she became the best moth bait ever invented. Every Polyphemus in range hastened to her,and other fluttering creatures of night followed. The influx came her way. She snatched wildly here and there until she had one in each hand and no place to put them. She could see more coming,and her aching heart,swollen with the strain of long excitement,hurt pitifully.She prayed in broken exclamations that did not always sound reverent,but never was a human soul more intense earnest.
Gene Stratton-Porter
If people make fun of you, that probably means you're doing something right.
Evanescence
What? Just because I can't have you right now, doesn't mean I'm okay with him having you.
Cora Carmack
FAIL UP. If something doesn’t go how you planned it, learn from it, do something differently next time. And, by the way, effort deserves credit. Pat yourself on the back!
Beth Ramsay
People always did like to talk, didn't they? That's why I call myself a witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.
Gregory Maguire
He twisted at the waist and stretched out on his side. “You’re a bit crazy. You throw apples in people’s faces when you’re angry. You go off half-cocked half the time. It entertains me to no end. So if you are irrational, I hope you stay that way. I love it.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
The speed of your success is limited only by your dedication and what you're willing to sacrifice
Nathan W. Morris
if you don't believe,nothing ever happens at all.
John Green
The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can, and for this they will be praised not blamed; but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame.
W.K. Marriott
No, the magic doesn't wear off at midnight. It's much more powerful than that. It comes from you. You wanted something, and so it came to be.
Emily Croy Barker
Oh yes, it hurts at times to be alone among the stars. But it hurts a lot more to be alone at a party. A lot more.
George R.R. Martin
[L]uxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience. (Ancillary Justice)
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Anyone who takes the time to be kind is beaut
Richelle E. Goodrich
If man really is fashioned, more than anything else, in the image of God, then clearly it follows that there is nothing on earth so near to God as a human being. The conclusion is inescapable, that to be in the presence of even the meanest, lowest, most repulsive specimen of humanity of the world is still to be closer to God than when looking up into a starry sky or at a beautiful sunset. Certainly that is why there is nothing in the new testament about beautiful sunsets.- Mike Mason -Author of "The Mystery of Marriage
Mike Mason
Your value and self-worth is not found in your former lover, not in the loving words of they spoke, not in the gentle ways that they held you, not in the sweetness of their kiss; but found in the love that you have for yourself.
Forrest Curran
You have a beautiful laugh. Like the promise of tomorrow.
Renee Ahdieh
Find someone who loves you enough to forgive you for all of your mistakes.
Debasish Mridha
Human beings long for connection, and our sense of usefulness derives from the feeling of connectedness. When we are connected — to our own purpose, to the community around us, and to our spiritual wisdom — we are able to live and act with authentic effectiveness.
Michael Meade
Consciousness and free will are necessary in order for human beings to live meaningful lives by supplying agency to our intentions. The innate capacity for consciousness and directed free will plays a linchpin role in making human curiosity a viable concept. We would lack an ability to learn without an inquisitive mind and the ability to act. A premeditated act of human free will enables us to apply what we learn and make calculated adjustments when our plans need alteration. Human beings’ cognitive processes and a liberal range of free will allows us to study the past for learning rubrics to employ in the present and cogitate upon a future course of action.
Kilroy J. Oldster
My belief is that when you're telling the truth, you're close to God. If you say to God, "I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don't like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You," that might be the most honest thing you've ever said. If you told me you had said to God, "It is all hopeless, and I don't have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand," it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real-really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold. Even mushrooms respond to light - I suppose they blink their mushroomy eyes, like the rest of us.Light reveals us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation. But like sunflowers we turn toward light. Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself. And in this light, we can see beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside.
Anne Lamott
Regardless of what you believe in or conceive of as the functionality of Reality, the Oneness of you with all you experience in your life is an absolute
Thomas Daniel Nehrer
The object, the woman, goes out into the world formed as men have formed her to be used as men wish to use her. She is then a provocation. The object provokes its use. It provokes its usebecause of its form, determined by the one who is provoked. The carpenter makes a chair, sits on it, then blames the chair because heis not standing. When the object complains about the use to which she is put, she is told, simply and firmly, not to provoke.
Andrea Dworkin
In this summer heat, I must remember that the realest things are the closest and farthest away, like the warmth found in winter: the heat hidden in the folds of one's coat, a lost floating breath, a kiss across the distance of zero degrees.
Meia Geddes
To be a disciple of Jesus means to learn from Him, to follow Him. The cost may be high.
Billy Graham
Wolf," she said. "Married is wonderful, married is lovely. But I loved you before that, and you were mine before that. Only you for me—only me for you. That's how it was before our marriage." The smile fell away and left her pale and determined. "That's how it was when I found you in that pit trap all those years ago—I knew as soon as I first saw your eyes. But then, I've known all my life what love is. It took you, who had nothing to compare it to, rather longer to figure out, to understand what is between us. But even when you did not understand or recognize it—it was always love.
Patricia Briggs
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken
Son-- "We don't need ladders, we have obsidian, bro."Mommy's thoughts-- "............................... .......fucking minecraft
Mel Brown
I look forward to seeing Christ and bowing before Him in praise and gratitude for all He has done for us, and for using me on this earth by His grace—just as I am.
Billy Graham
I am worth more than these excuses. I am worth more than this inconsistent, unhealthy, disappointing dynamic. I am worthy of finding someone that is never going to allow us to settle into this toxic, distorted version of love.
Liz Newman
I wish my life were a movie and I could take it into the editing room and totally cut this part out. And some other parts. Some other parts definitely need to be cut.
Susane Colasanti
How do I find joy in my homeschool journey?The answer is quite simple. I accept lots of God's grace. Grace to make mistakes. Grace to take a nap when I am exhausted. Grace to not feel guilty. Without His abundant provision of grace, I would be depleted, discouraged, and dissatisfied. Instead, I place all my trust in His direction and I embrace my calling as a homeschool mom. His grace has set me free from worry, fear, doubt, and guilt and I am overflowing with joy. Praise God!
Tamara L. Chilver
I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity...
Joe Biden
She got me to crack open the window to my soul, and I really don't want to slam it down on her fingers just yet.
Collette West
Full emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade ship.
Katherine Applegate
He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebearers, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.
James Reston Jr.
You express the truth of your character with the choice of your actions.
Steve Maraboli
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Yes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.
Rick Yancey
Every person has one particular time in his life when he is more beautiful than he is ever going to be again. For some it is at seven, for others at seventeen or seventy, and as Laura Fleischman read out loud from Shakespeare, I remember thinking that for her it was probably just then.
Frederick Buechner
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
Henry David Thoreau
Adoption isn't just a childhood experience, it's a life-long experience.
DaShanne Stokes