Quotes by American Authors - Page 39

It’s funny how life moves in a complete circle sometimes. There might be lots of bumps in the road and maybe even a few cliffs, but it’s a journey, and sometimes it can bring you to the most wonderful places.
Nyrae Dawn
I want to discover every hidden secret of your body and a thousand ways to make you scream my name.
Jennifer Probst
Let those who wish have their respectability- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic.
Richard Halliburton
The spirit of a man is constructed out of his choices.
IRVIN D.YALOM
It's a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man's life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.
John Steinbeck
Easter is a marvelous affirmation of the genius of our design, but it is likewise the blunt acknowledgement that left to its own devices, the genius of our design will result in the destruction of our lives.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Will is a gift from God, desire from the devil.
James Rozoff
Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society
W.E.B. Du Bois
Women are the bloodthirsty sex," said Ric sadly. "We get the reputation, but it is only because the women stand behind us, and say, 'Kill it. Squish it.
Patricia Briggs
To change someone's mind, requires only that you speak a more compelling narrative about their situation than their current one.
L.R.W. Lee
He prefers a deliberate performance that can be made to seem spontaneous.
Sherry Turkle
It's the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is FREE. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what to the religions do with this? They say, "Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us." The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the fact of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.
Robert Sheckley
We must reject the artificial and embrace what is real and true: truth in food, community, relationships and self.
Bryant McGill
[T]he accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis.
Joseph Brodsky
It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
Dale Carnegie
Apologies require taking full responsibility. No half-truths, no partial admissions, no rationalizations, no finger pointing, and no justifications belong in any apology.
Cathy Burnham Martin
I could never acceptlife as it was,I could never gobbledown all itspoisonsbu there were parts,tenuous magic partsopen for theasking.
Charles Bukowski
Casey glanced at her plate again, recalling the posters of her elementary school lunchroom: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT. So, how much you ate indicated the quantity of your desire. Walter was also implying that how quickly you got your food revealed the likelihood of achieving your goals. She was in fact terribly hungry, but she'd pretended to be otherwise to be ladylike and had moved away from the table to be agreeable, and now she'd continue to be hungry" (Free Food For Millionaires, p.92.)
Min Jin Lee
But do you want this? It's not much of a life. Don't you see? It's the first life I've had in four hundred years. With you--in the only way that matters--I'm alive again.
Claudia Gray
We don’t hide crazy,” I said. “We put it on the porch and let it entertain the neighbors.
Nick Wilgus
Poverty only tries men's souls. It is loneliness that breaks the heart.
Sam Rayburn
...the quickest, efficient, least expensive way to educate a man is to make it painful for him when he is wrong, the same as with any other animal.
James Jones
People do not start off stupid, they grow to be stupid.
Marc Marcel
People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.
Michelle M. Pillow
He'd believed it. She couldn't believe that he believed it. Sometimes, she hated him for that.
Marie Rutkoski
If I charge, follow me. If I retreat, kill me. If I die, revenge me.
U.S. Marine Corps
Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken.Infallibility is a sin in any man.All laws can be broken and are.Often.
Craig Ferguson
Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. We do not need to fear anything. We are whole: our deepest happiness is intrinsic to the nature of our minds, and it is not damaged through uncertainty and change.
Sharon Salzberg
Are you saying that we can affect what happened in the past? That we can change it?
Michelle Madow
Ha ha ha ha! Tee-hee-hee!Mwa-ha mwa-ha!Kee kee kee!Ho ho ho ho! Haw-hee-haw! Heh heh heh heh!Gah guffaw! Hoo hoo hoo hoo!Hoi hoi-eee!Ba ha ha ha! Tsee tsee tsee!Giggle, titter,snicker, crow,laughter makesmy 'happy' grow!
Richelle E. Goodrich
Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean to maintain the slave trade while the very same empire later sent another fleet to enforce abolition. I would not have opposed the second policy because of my objections to the first; rather it seems to me that the second policy was morally necessitated by its predecessor.)
Christopher Hitchens
If there's one thing I believe, its that I don't know anything and anything can happen
Amy Lee
Men and women walked casually about as they did on the main floor, every now and then stopping one another, exchanging pleasantries or scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip.
Robert Ludlum
Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid. Then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words. I like to think that the same words that hurt can heal. It’s a matter of how you pick them.
George Carlin
She took his hand, and he smiled down at her. "No mating yet?"t"It depends on how...persuasive you could be."t"Hot damn, woman. I can be persuasive.
Terry Spear
There are three ages of man: youth middle age and "Gee you look good."
Red Skelton
Good. Because I don't need protecting.""I knew you'd say that.But the thing is, sometimes you do. And sometimes I do. We're meant to protect each other, but not from everything. Not from the truth. That's what it means to love someone but let them be themselves.
Cassandra Clare
Quite aside from supernatural experiences, after having given this much thought and extensive consideration, I am quite certain that it is Christianity that is based in Objective Reality and Truth and is therefore validpp
R. Alan Woods
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's-self is,
Walt Whitman
Plants can be affected by stray voltage and they may show stunted growth, deformed growth, or go dormant. In extreme cases they may die.
Steven Magee
The more you get set into your own world, the smaller your world becomes.
J.R. Rim
How do you like your blue-eyed boy Mr Death?
E.E. Cummings
The root systems of these lies we tell ourselves tend to grow together. It’s all connected with the belief human love is conditional. But human love isn’t conditional. No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it’s just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.
Donald Miller
I even made poor Louis take me on Crusade. How's that for blasphemy? I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus. Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn... but the troops were dazzled.
James Goldman
The desire to live life to its fullest, to acquire more knowledge, to abandon the economic treadmill, are all typical reactions to these experiences in altered states of consciousness. The previous fear of death is typically quelled. If the individual generally remains thereafter in the existential state of awareness, the deep internal feeling of eternity is quite profound and unshakable.
Edgar D. Mitchell
Sure, I've had times it was hard to meditate....But even then I still end up being more calmly agitated.
Nanette Mathews
You spit in this?""Yup."Chris shrugged. "As long as you're honest.
R.L. Mathewson
Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.
Rick Riordan
That was as rough a thing as I ever heard tell of happening to a boy. And I'm mighty proud to learn how my boy stood up to it. You couldn't ask any more of a grown man... It's not a thing you can forget. I don't guess it's a thing you ought to forget. What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem mighty cruel and unfair, but that's how life is part of the time. But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad.
Fred Gipson
It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.
Stacy Schiff
...I started to realize how many great things could happen by confronting the things that scare you most.
David Archuleta
Everybody keeps talking about 'fighting' the cancer," he said, "everybody keeps telling me to fight for my life, to fight the disease, and how their uncle won the battle against cancer and their cousin won the fight against cancer and black blah blah blah.""Okay...and?""I'm not fighting," he said. "It's already inside me... and I'm not going to fight. I'm going to be a good host, let it pass through me.. resist nothing. Sieve. Let it all pass through.
Amanda Palmer
If you have love, it doesn’t matter what you don’t have.
Debasish Mridha
Stars will blossom in the darkness Violets bloom beneath the snow.
Julia Dorr
On the day I swore to uphold the Hippocratic oath, the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I waited for lightning to strike. Who was I, vowing calmly among all these necktied young men to steal life out of nature's jaws, every old time we got half a chance and a paycheck?... I could not accept the contract: that every child born human upon this earth comes with a guarantee of perfect health and old age clutched in its small fist.
Barbara Kingsolver
Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cleaning graves and sitting next to them before fires, sharing food with those who will not eat again. We raise children and tell them other things about who they can be and what they are worth: to us, everything. We love each other fiercely, while we live and after we die. We survive; we are savages.
Jesmyn Ward
In the end I just let the dreams come and go, let whatever bliss or pain they brought roll through me....Time wears away hope like water wears away rock. As for faith, I remained in a standoff with Isis. But love, as Paul of Tarsus would say, is greater than hope and faith. It can survive without either. Love was all I had, and it would not go away. It would not die even though sometimes I wished it would.
Elizabeth Cunningham
Do you act the same in society as you do in private? Do you speak to everyone the same way?""No, no quite," I replied, wincing. "Of course. No one does. You put on one disguise for society. You put on another for your sister. For your parents. Your customer the other night." I felt my face warm. "But what about in private? Anyone can be themselves then without--ah! Ow!-- without putting on an act." “We do not remain the same each minute to the next. Every word you hear, every sight you see, every smell, every thought you have, every moment—it all changes you. We keep putting on mask after mask, layers over layers. That’s how one grows.
Tarun Shanker
…it is the public sector I find more interesting, because governments and other non-market institutions have long suffered from the innovation malaise of top-heavy bureaucracies. Today, these institutions have an opportunity to fundamentally alter the way they cultivate and promote good ideas. The more the government thinks of itself as an open platform instead of a centralized bureaucracy, the better it will be for all of us, citizens and activists, and entrepreneurs alike.
Steven Johnson
Most parents don't know really their children.
John Green