Quotes by American Authors - Page 370

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
Steven Pressfield
They are the we of me.
Carson McCullers
I'll play your fucking game. But I don't have to play by your rules.
Christina Baker Kline
The Mustard Seed CharmWith Faith As Small As A Mustard Seed, Then You Can Move Mountains: Nothing Will Be Impossible
Viola Shipman
Let the mind help us to get there, after we have decided with our heart. Let the mind follow us, rather than lead us.
Jamie Cedar Rogers
They'd pay attention to me less. They'd judge me by gender, by looks, by weight before anything else. I automatically started every interaction at a disadvantage.
Kameron Hurley
And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy.As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, but she understands. Language no longer matter. There are no barriers between herself and others, just love.The gorgeous views seem to go on forever. Ornate structures, mansions, banquet halls, and natural beauty, orchards, gardens. People congregate around huge marble fountains. In the distance are snow-capped mountains of the purist white. She can hear the sounds of rushing rivers and the surf of the ocean at once.Everyone around her is happy, loving, thankful. A choir sings songs of joy and peace while others play musical instruments of every kind in perfect harmony. Children laugh and play in the streets as well as in the clouds above her head.
Victoria Kahler
Ian closed his eyes. Beth watched emotions flicker across his face, the uncertainty, the stubbornness, the raw pain he’d lived with for so long. He didn’t always know how to express his emotions, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel them deeply.
Jennifer Ashley
Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you’ve chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.
Maya Angelou
Our tears are precious, necessary, and part of what make us such endearing creatures.
David Richo
When we honestly take stock of our ability, we are then granted the opportunity to improve our circumstance. Accessing where you stand is the only way to stand somewhere else.
Chris Matakas
When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.
Sarah Addison Allen
How was she not the quintessential woman in our culture, compulsively pleasing others in order to achieve some degree of perfection and power that's forever just around the corner, out of reach? It was easier for her to disappear, to free herself finally from that body, to find a perfection in dying.
Kim Gordon
Today, many of us seem to live our lives like honeybees collecting honey which, at the end, we will leave to others for their enjoyment! Our values are often twisted. Our success is largely measured by the size of our bank account, how beautiful or handsome we are, or how luxurious are our homes, cars or boats. Reality TV shows continue to appeal to millions of us who choose to live vicariously through others, rather than taking charge of our own lives and focusing on manifesting the hidden resources that are invested in our souls.Women are often encouraged to seek superficial and temporary beauty, at the risk of endangering their health, even killing themselves, while men are encouraged to appreciate and chase a life of pleasure. In contrast, those whose lives are centered on spirituality are frequently ridiculed as old-fashioned or at least looked down upon. We seek surgical procedures to fight the natural aging process and enjoy ‘borrowed youth’ a bit longer, even though we know, deep in our hearts, that it is ultimately a losing battle.
Farnaz Masumian
This was the problem with having walls so hard and high and unscalable, she supposed. When they came down, they crumbled completely, shattering into nothingness. She felt utterly defenseless right now.
L.J. Smith
Always remember that no matter how beautiful you are, you're only as beautiful as the level of respect and love you give to your ownself. Ofcourse, along the way you will make mistakes and some mistakes will pull you to your lowest, but every mistake CAN always be fixed to heal your soul to regain your beauty. Those that can't be fixed, are actually intentional that tend to continue. So be faithful to your ownself and live up to your beauty.
John Yang aka Private83
The suicide? What would he have done if death did not exist?
Marty Rubin
Recall the metaphor I used in chapter 4 relating the random movements of molecules in a gas to the random movements of evolutionary change. Molecules in a gas move randomly with no apparent sense of direction. Despite this, virtually every molecule in a gas in a beaker, given sufficient time, will leave the beaker. I noted that this provides a perspective on an important question concerning the evolution of intelligence. Like molecules in a gas, evolutionary changes also move every which way with no apparent direction. Yet we nonetheless see a movement toward greater complexity and greater intelligence, indeed to evolution’s supreme achievement of evolving a neocortex capable of hierarchical thinking. So we are able to gain an insightinto how an apparently purposeless and directionless process can achieve an apparently purposeful result in one field (biological evolution) by looking at another field (thermodynamics).
Ray Kurzweil
While There may be power in forgiveness, there is even more power in lobbing a Molotov cocktail through someone's dining room window.
Jim Norton
At all times we are either in fear or we are in love. We are either open or we are closed. Expansive or contracted.
Eileen Anglin
If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.
Sidney Madwed
A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
Doctor, I appreciate your diagnosis, but I will not accept your verdict
Joseph McClendon III
This easy acceptance of an opaque limit to our speculative insight; this satisfaction with a Being whose character we simply apprehend without comprehending anything more about him, and with whom after a certain point our dealings can be only of a volitional and emotional sort; above all, this sitting down contended with a blank unmediated dualism - are they not the very picture of unfaithfulness to the rights and duties of our theoretic reasons?
Willam James
Your Purpose Should Dictate How You Spend Your Time
Brenda Johnson Padgitt
Sometimes keeping a secret seems like the right thing to do because telling the truth might hurt someone and makes it seem like you don't love them. But really, telling the truth is the right thing to do. It's the most loving thing to do.-Kaylee
Ginny L. Yttrup
So it's over I guess they are in love or do they just think it huh.
Christopher Velazquez
If only these walls could talk…the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone’s a liar.
Gregg Olsen
On some level, with its carrousels and castle and cowboys, its mysterious jungle and its animated characters, Disneyland is a highly idealized elaboration of our childhoods. It can be seen as a portal through which we revisit (maybe even heal) our youth.
Leslie Le Mon
She didn't open the envelope until she'd gotten to the bus station and needed to pay for her ticket. He hadn't given her the thousand dollars she'd asked for-he'd given her ten thousand.
Ann Brashares
It's just one more thing she hadn't considered, and as the idea of it settles over her, she realizes again how entwined their lives are. They're like two trees whose branches have grown together. Even if you pull them out by the trunks, they're still going to be twisted and tangled and nearly impossible to separate at the roots.
Jennifer E. Smith
And the trouble is if you don't risk anything you risk even more.
Erica Jong
I never did anything in life to anyone's imagination.
Henry James
As I sat up I turned my head to the side, but immediately straightened it again when I felt a sharp pain shoot through my neck.
Jennifer Starzec
Every war, no matter how brutal, is built on the premise that one day, when all is said and done, the ends will justify the means. But over and over again we learn that in real life, there is no ends. There’s just the means. All there is is means.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Something for nothing given to one group is nothing for something taken from another.
Orrin Woodward
Any story worth telling has been embellished a little bit, Skyco, but the best stories are born from an honest seed that simply grows a little in the retelling of it.
Jennifer Frick-Ruppert
There is nothing like taking someone's breath away.
Erika Lance
God's will isn't hidden away like the myths and philosophies and knowledge of the world. Jesus told us openly and daily what his will for us is. Love one another.
Francine Rivers
The bravest thing that men do is love women.
Mort Sahl
As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles.She wasbuoyant by nature;she wanted to travel,go to the theater, go to museums.What he wantedwas to lie on the couchwith the Timesover his face,so that death, when it came,wouldn't seem a significant change.
Louise Glück
Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, 'I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?
Margaret Maron
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
Joseph Campbell
And blue-lung'd combers lumbered to the kill.
Robert Lowell
If you stay open to the wisdom of your Muse, you may discover you’re a playwright, a sculptor, a kitchen-table comedian, a beacon of creative kindness, or a person who chooses grace over ego and contentment over greed. And in that choice you will create an world of joy within yourself, you’ll truly be an artist of being alive.
Jill Badonsky
I always wondered. If…” Her mouth was on autopilot.“If what, Ella?”“If I crossed your mind wherever you were.”“You don’t cross my mind, Ella. You live in it.” He tugged her closer to him.
Elizabeth SaFleur
It is easy to hold on, but it is difficult to let it go.
Debasish Mridha
There is clearly a feeling abroad that God smiled on our beginnings, and that we should return to them as we can. If we really did attempt to return to them, we would find Moses as well as Christ, Calvin, and his legions of intellectual heirs. And we would find a recurrent, passionate, insistence on bounty or liberality, mercy and liberality, on being kind and liberal, liberal and bountiful, and enjoying the great blessings God has promised to liberality to the poor.
Marilynne Robinson
Don’t be afraid when you have to pray fervently because of your circumstances. God is wanting to do something great through you!
Stormie Omartian
I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
Ignorance is avoiding that which stands in front of me out of the misplaced hope that it will put what I’m ignoring behind me. Instead, it’s most certain to drop it on top of me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The conquered roam free in the box of insanity.
T.F. Hodge
There is nothing wrong with falling in love. Don't trip and bump your head only to realize you're experiencing infatuation.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
The story of the "bondage" in Egypt, of the use of the Jews as slaves in great construction enterprises, their rebellion and escape - or emigration - to Asia, has many internal signs of essential truth, mingled, of course, with supernatural interpolations customary in all the historical writings of the ancient East.
Will Durant
If you fear the man who takes care of you, no one has ever loved you truly.
Bryanna Reid
But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
So many people come up to me and said “Nick, I don’t have a purpose, I don’t know what to do in my life.” Let me ask you one thing, if you went through your life full of pain, full of tears, and at the end of your life, you actually save somebody’s life, is your life worth living? Is the pain worth someone’s life? If you could actually save somebody? Can you imagine? If you actually saw somebody nearly get run over by a car and you dive and get them out of the way of the car? For instance – an example, would that be worth living? You’ve saved somebody’s life, I don’t know. What about this? Let’s say you have a problem in your life. And you want to give up now. Imagine if someone 10 years older who’s gone through the exact same thing that you have – actually got through it and came to you and said, “you know what, I know how it feels. I’ve been there! I’ve been going through what you’re going through now. But I’m still here. Would that not encourage you? Could that possibly save your life? Yes. Is that not a purpose worth living for? And that’s why I believe in you because that is the greatest purpose! It’s to love! Honest! It sounds corny - whatever you want to say, I don’t care! I love people because there is freedom and power in loving people.
Nick Vujicic
The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.
Susan Sontag
In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.
Marya Mannes
The way my tia looks at Raul is the way I look at Martin. He makes her happy and helps her see that she is stronger than she thought she was. It's not that he makes her stronger, but he definitely helps her see that she has been strong all along.
Isabel Quintero