Quotes by American Authors - Page 3349

If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.
Vance Havner
I don't pay much attention to the distinction between fantasy and science fiction–or between “genre” and “mainstream” for that matter. For me, all fiction is about prizing the logic of metaphors-which is the logic of narratives in general–over reality, which is irreducibly random and senseless.We spend our entire lives trying to tell stories about ourselves–they’re the essence of memory. It is how we make living in this unfeeling accidental universe tolerable. That we call such a tendency “the narrative fallacy” doesn’t mean it doesn’t also touch upon some aspect of the truth.Some stories simply literalize their metaphors a bit more explicitly.
Ken Liu
Much of our suffering is caused by our false perceptions and attachment to mental images. We assume things to be true without really knowing whether they are true or not, then create a world of hurt for ourselves and others.
Joseph P. Kauffman
Did I help someone to realize a dream they thought they'd lost? Did I listen when someone told me the reward is worth the cost? Did I praise someone for their efforts and encourage someone toward their dreams? Did I help someone to understand the end never justifies the means? Did I make someone laugh and smile when they would much, rather frown? Was I the one who picked them up when everyone put them down? Am I, the one they confide in and know their conversations secure? Did I provide them with someone to trust in knowing their friendship will always endure? Am I humble and constantly striving to become more than I was yesterday? Did I focus on the successes of others and follow through with all that I say? If I constantly strive to become the one who can say I did to did I's. Then my life is fulfilled, knowing I have achieved life's greatest prize.
Carl Morris
Life is a lifetime opportunity to make the right choice to be great.
Debasish Mridha
One thing about a skunk—once you recognize the markings, you know things are gonna stink.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Buruma is wise to recommend a balance of concessions and coordination in order to avoid war.
Renate Bridenthal
It was not like everyone had said.Not like being needed,or needing; not desperate;it did not whisperthat I'd come to harm. I didn't losemy head. No, I was notgoing to leap from a greatheight and flapmy wings.It was in factthe opposite of flying:it contained the wishto be toppled, to be on the floor,the ground, anywhere I mightlie down. . . .On my back, and you on me.
Deborah Garrison
There is truth and knowledge beyond understanding.
Bryant McGill
And that noise! It was enough to make that happy mailman on Mr. Rogers go postal!
Christopher Golden
Not all social animals are social with the same degree of commitment. In some species, the members are so tied to each other and interdependent as to seem the loosely conjoined cells of a tissue. The social insects are like this; they move, and live all their lives, in a mass; a beehive is a spherical animal. In other species, less compulsively social, the members make their homes together, pool resources, travel in packs or schools, and share the food, but any single one can survive solitary, detached from the rest. Others are social only in the sense of being more or less congenial, meeting from time to time in committees, using social gatherings as ad hoc occasions for feeding and breeding. Some animals simply nod at each other in passing, never reaching even a first-name relationship.
Lewis Thomas
I don't know. There's just something kind of mortifying to me about the intensity of those feelings. I remember them so clearly.
Becky Albertalli
We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.
Shirley Jackson
Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large.
Jack London
Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat driver” syndrome.
Robert A. Heinlein
Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight
Mark Twain
No amount of meditation, yoga, diet, and reflection will make all of our problems go away, but we can transform our difficulties into our practice until little by little they guide us on our way.
Jack Kornfield
Whether between man and women, man and man, or woman and woman; look not towards any system that binds society created by man for guidance, but be guided by the principles of love. Love is the only law that commands this universe, and is the only language that is understood universally.
Forrest Curran
Magnanimous of you.'His mouth twitched. 'Mmm. Use more words like that, please. Schoolmistress words. Long, impressive ones.' He'd made the last three words sound like an innuendo.
Julie Anne Long
Will my eyes adjust to this darkness? Will I find you in the dark – not in the streaks of light which remain, but in the darkness? Has anyone ever found you there? Did they love what they saw? Did they see love? And are there songs for singing when the light has gone dim? Or in the dark, is it best to wait in silence?Noon has darkened. As fast as they could say, ‘He’s dead,’ the light dimmed. And where are you in the darkness? I learned to spy you in the light. Here in this darkness, I cannot find you. If I had never looked for you, or looked but never found, I would not feel this pain of your absence. Or is not your absence in which I dwell, but your elusive troubling presence?It’s the neverness that is so painful. Never again to be here with us – never to sit with us at the table…. All the rest of our lives we must live without him. Only our death can stop the pain of his death.
Nicholas Wolterstorff
The question of desirable grief and pain or the necessity for it must also be faced. [Are] growth and self-fulfillment possible at all without pain and grief and sorrow and turmoil? If grief and pain are sometimes necessary for growth of the person, then we must learn not to protect people from them automatically as if they were always bad. Not allowing people to go through their pain, and protecting them from it, may turn out to be a kind of overprotection, which in turn implies a certain lack of respect for the integrity and the intrinsic nature and the future development of the individual.
Abraham H. Maslow
Anticipating death and calling it gain, Christians are evangelists of the grotesque. The very hope of the Gospel rests directly upon our ability to imagine a world in which suffering serves as the soil from which resurrection springs.
Ben Palpant
I liked the idea of adopting a dog that was beyond the puppy stage, a dog with an unknown span of life under his belt. It seemed only fair; he didn't know what he was getting into with me either.
Meg Donohue
Without saying anything, Dara gathered her pillow and one of the soft comforters from her bed and carried it into Carolina's room. Mackenzie and Jennifer followed her. They would sleep in her room that night, keeping the ice packs around her, adjusting the fan. One by one they fixed their make-shift beds on the floor, close to each other, and close to Carolina.
Barbara Casey
The future is nothing but a reflection of the present and the past.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.
Bill Watterson
Tumbling-hair picker of buttercups violetsdandelionsAnd the big bullying daisies through the field wonderfulwith eyes a little sorryAnother comes also picking flowers
E.E. Cummings
When you are aligned with the truth of who you truly are, then you experience bliss.
Vivian Amis
I killed it," Athan lamented. "I am a fool." His righteous anger, his arguments, his adoration for the being who claimed Eldaloth's name faded and disintegrated with all the suffering life behind him. A poisonous dread seeped as deep into his soul as the exultant honor and pride he had felt just minutes before. The vast gap between the two emotions a crater into which his very soul plummeted in free-fall.
Brian K. Fuller
Men, you'll never be a good groom to your wife unless you're first a good bride to Jesus.
Timothy J. Keller
Remember, today’s truth could be tomorrow’s absurdity.
Debasish Mridha
The emphasis and the reason for a pure humility is to result in love for others; not always necessarily the belittlement of self. When there is pride and self-righteousness and being pretentiously too far above, generally, one has a difficult time reaching the compassionate side of love for others, the side that understands (or at least attempts to understand): 'I am aware that I am not so far from falling in the same way.' Humility seeks to understand, and sometimes even relate; and in result, the love lovingly, properly, effectively wills the removal of the destructive sins of another as from oneself.
Criss Jami
In her attempt to make me a good man, I made her a bad woman.
Darnell Lamont Walker
‎'The demon cried, waving its furry arms above his head like a demented orangutan.
Jana Oliver
...this is your life. It's not your mom's. You have to do what makes you happy too
Jessica Verdi
The gift of life is present at every moment — even moments that seem insignificant or unpleasant.
Bryant McGill
The choices we make impact not only our life but everyone we come into contact with daily!
Joanfrances Boyle
You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition's arms.
Susan Neiman
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.
Christopher McDougall
Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing…changing. You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.
Steve Maraboli
I am called to enter into the inner sanctuary of my own being where God has chosen to dwell. The only way to that place is prayer, unceasing prayer, Many struggles and much pain can clear the way but I am certain that only unceasing prayer can let me enter it.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
The spirit who inhabits her animates us all. Destroy the host, you destroy the power. The young die first; the old wither slowly; the eldest perhaps would go last. But she is the Queen of the Damned, and the Damned can't live without her.
Anne Rice
Let the passions and cupidities and dreams and kinks and ideals and greed and hopes and foul corruptions of all men and women have their day and the world will still be better off, for there is more good than bad in the sum of us and our workings.
Norman Mailer
Jem gave her a wistful look. “Must you go? I was rather hoping that you’d stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must.”t“I’ll stay,” Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. “I can minister angelically.”t“None too convincingly. And you’re not as pretty to look at as Tessa is,” Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow.t“How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared it to gazing at the radiance of the sun.”tJem still had his eyes closed. “If they mean that it gives you a headache, they aren’t wrong.
Cassandra Clare
Courage is often associated with aggression, but instead should be seen as a willingness to act from the heart.
Donna Quesada