Quotes by American Authors - Page 360

It isn’t right to wish pain on other people just because they hurt me first.
Veronica Roth
I think that stupidity is like a wild fire burning through the social fabric of an intrinsically reasonable existence.
Travis Culliton
Note to businesspersons and salespersons: "Be professional" does not mean "be a robot." Just be friendly and act like a real person. Cool?
Richie Norton
All things considered, the happiest epitaph to have etched on one's headstone is this: 'He never knew what hit him'.
Thomas Ligotti
Memorization has gotten a bad rap recently. Lots of students, and even some educators, say that being able to reason is more important than knowing facts; and besides, why bother committing things to memory when you've got Google? My response to this - after I've finished inwardly groaning - is that of course reasoning is important, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know facts as well. It's not like you have to choose between one or the other. Besides, facts give you a foundation on which to reason about things.
Stefanie Weisman
In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.
Carl Sagan
Good ideas stay with you until you eventually write the story.
Brian Keene
Life is to be enjoyed, not endured
Gordon B. Hinckley
But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long words that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb. every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what-these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.
William Zinsser
If you want to be excellent at something, you must move away from your comfort zone, overcome doubt, setbacks and failure. Never give up. Keep plugging away and being persistent. One day, success will be yours.
Mark F. LaMoure
So, Beav, tell me about yourself.""I'm Blue.""Sweetheart, if I had your dubious taste in men, I wouldn't be too happy, either.""My name is Blue. Blue Bailey.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Mindfulness is living in the moment without judging it.
Debasish Mridha
There is Irish Spring, but there is no fall soap.
Jerry Mooney
It's not the way I wanted to spend eternity with the man I love, but it will have to do. At least we are together.
Theresa Braun
Nowhere is moral shortcoming more prevalent than in the intersection between our espoused morality and the way we engage romantic and sexual partners. In truth, how we function sexually is a microcosm of the way that we are in the world. We might ask ourselves, "Are we being selfish, considerate, or dismissive? Are we minimizing, compliant or controlling?" Sex is the ultimate laboratory where we can actually try out new ways of relating to ourselves and our lover, being conscious and mindful of how we impact another person. It takes great humility to open a genuine exploration of our lived--not just stated--morality. But to live by the dictates of our own internal compass brings equally great joy, serenity, and self-respect.
Alexandra Katehakis
Michael had once read to her how God had cast a man and woman out of paradise. Yet, for all their human faults and failures. God had shown them the way back in.
Francine Rivers
I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.
Rebecca Goldstein
From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Groucho Marx
God’s absence in the carnage is due to one single rather unnerving fact; that at some time past He honored our request that He leave. And if we are not brutally honest with ourselves regarding that choice, it is we ourselves who have set the stage for the next tragedy.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Food wasn’t one of the amenities at Cooper, the five-hundred-bed hospital on which millions of poor people depended. Nor was medicine. “Out of stock today” was the nurses’ official explanation. Plundered and resold out of supply cabinets was an unofficial one. What patients needed, families had to buy on the street and bring in.
Katherine Boo
Did you know I have always suspected that men were idiots," Daphne ground out, "but I was never positive until today.
Julia Quinn
The best secret of success is to always be ready to find and open the door of opportunity.
Debasish Mridha
The ear tends to be lazy craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected the eye on the other hand tends to be impatient craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
W.H. Auden
When love is part of a game, it means nothing. When love is love, it means everything.
Kate McGahan
In the long second before everyone absorbs what just happened, I see the angel rolling his eyes heavenward, like a teenager in the presence of overwhelming lameness. Some people just have no sense of gratitude.
Susan Ee
True education gives you power. Education and experience make you wise.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
If I told you that God speaks to us through our urges so long as these are safe and proper and totally civilized and don't hurt anyone, what would I be saying? If I told you longing is okay as long as it is within the bounds of what our world considers normal, I would be going counter to my whole tradition. My people discovered divine urges, for goodness' sake. Not namby-pamby urges either. It was loincloth-tearing, harlot-marrying, sacrificing, succumbing, and surrendering kinds of urges. Not without bickering and haggling, I'll grant you, but ultimately urges of the worst kind, the kind that demanded everything.
Francisco X. Stork
It takes life to live life
Jonathan Safran Foer
As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable." ... In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention--not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.
Victor J. Stenger
Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime...Please, treat your garlic with respect...Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.
Anthony Bourdain
Destiny n: a tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce
What I know definitively about life at this age … is absolutely nothing.
James Qualls
Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity... We cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access reassurance.
A.E. Newton
Do not despair. Do not give up. Look for the sunlight through the clouds.
Gordon B. Hinckley
All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.
H.L. Mencken
Suffering so someone else didn't have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else's well being.
Jodi Picoult
I went to my dresser, turned the lamp off, and crawled into bed. I was taking a chance but I couldn't help slipping in behind Tweet and draping my arm around her waist. She placed her hand on top of mine and squeezed it slightly. I buried my nose in her dark hair, breathing in the scent of raspberry and vanilla. This was were we belonged.
Alison G. Bailey
Tact by its nature entails staying mum, prudently electing to forgo urging other people to pursue an alternative course of action. Creation of silent spaces in our own life and equitable distribution of periods of respite that allow for periods of equable inner reflection is necessary to spur personal growth. It is equally important to honor other people’s intrinsic need for periods of introspection, uninterrupted by unsolicited advice
Kilroy J. Oldster
A North Korean soldier would later recall a buddy who had been given an American-made nail clipper and was showing it off to his friends. The soldier clipped a few nails, admired the sharp, clean edges, and marveled at the mechanics of this simple item. Then he realized with a sinking heart: If North Korea couldn’t make such a fine nail clipper, how could it compete with American weapons?
Barbara Demick
Your ability to readapt in the face of change will instill confidence, improve agility, foster psychological safety, and make you more resilient in life and in business. Your re-adaptability will serve you well to thrive in most any situation or environment.
Susan C.Young
Blind cat jumps with faith you should too.
Marcia Meier
Live your life, no matter what that life is.
Corey Taylor
But you're absolutely sure we're right?' The question carried an intensity absent from the previous conversation. 'I remember talking with Henry Kissinger,' she continued, 'and he came up and said 'What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be re-elected? You were wrong on Haldeman.' And he seemed upset and said something about it being terribly, terribly unfair.'If there's anyone who has not been wronged, Woodward said, it is Bob Haldeman. It was the most definite statement Woodward made during lunch.'Oh, really,' said Mrs. Graham. 'I'm glad to hear you say that, because I was worried.' She paused. 'You've reassured me. You really have.' She looked at Woodward. Her face said, Do better.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
Carl Bernstein
Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.
Clay Shirky
Truly there are different kinds of pain.  But the most agonizing is the pain of regret, for which there is no lasting relief and no remedy.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Why, it would be such fun,' he chuckled, 'to just forget all about the hours when the sun didn't shine, and remember only the nice, pleasant ones.
Eleanor H. Porter
He was a poet who sometimes taught Free University classes or travelled in the western states of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, speaking to high school English classes, stunning middle-class boys and girls (he hoped) with the news that poetry was alive—narcoleptic, to be sure, but still possessed of a certain hideous vitality.
Stephen King
I haven't been to a movie for three months of Sundays. I gather from what Carolyn reports that Hollywood now produces false entertainment: unmitigated violence on the screen; snickering, laughter in the audience.
John Cage
Women, you have all this power, I’m telling you. In business, you have something called an inferred fiduciary duty to yourself. Look at the other hugely successful women in industry, commerce, science and everywhere else and you’ll see women who are feminine, beautiful but also do not rely on men for their self-empowerment.
Gene Simmons
Destiny is real. And she's not mild-mannered. She will come around and hit you in the face and knock you over and before you know what hit you, you're naked- stripped of everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you didn't know- and there you are! A bloody nose, bruises all over you, and naked. And it's the most beautiful thing.
C. JoyBell C.
I want to have the heart and mind of a queen,” she whispered. “I want it more than anything. But I’m only pretending. I can’t find the feeling of it inside
Kristin Cashore
There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life.
Kurt Cobain
All writing is rewriting.
John Green
Extravagant love, as in every generation before us, has been ridiculed and scorned. it is seen as wasteful and reckless overspending. But extravagant love, the offering of everything, the emptying of the pockets of our life, is the essence of true Christianity.
Eric Ludy
It helps to think of a self as being like a drop of water that goes into the ocean and becomes one with the ocean.Each drop still exists but is now part of a much larger entity; yet it still does its small part as an element of the ocean.As significant as a single drop may appear,if it were not for all the drops,there would be no ocean.
David V. Gaggin
In your thirties something strange starts to happen. It’s a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I’m — you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you’re not. You’re thirty-five. And then you’re bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it’s decades before you admit it.
Sara Gruen
Farmers today keep themselves in ignorance of the needs and true nature of pigs precisely because to know would put their conscience in a terrible bind. Wilful ignorance of this kind is no better than complicity.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The general rule is that people who enjoy life also enjoy marriage.
Phyllis Battelle
Children must be taught that they are worth being heard, being saved and being loved.
C. JoyBell C.
Steep fall to the groundshatteringlike clay pigeons missed by bad shotsand unsteady hands.
Jessica Kristie