Quotes by American Authors - Page 458

It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.
Eugene H. Peterson
In a typical college romance novel, he'd be a gorgeous but troubled sex god who'd cure all my deep-seated psych issues with a good hard fuck. I'd smell his misogyny and abusive tendencies from miles off but my brain would turn to hormone soup because abs. That's the formula. Broken girl + bad boy = sexual healing. All you need to fix that tragic past is a six-pack. More problems? Add abs.It's Magic Dick Lit.
Leah Raeder
Time sure kicks the shit out of people...
Dan Simmons
True beauty is a rayThat springs from the sacred depths of the soul,and illuminates the body, just as lifesprings from the kernel of a stone andgives colour and scent to a flower.
Kahlil Gibran
It was a dream, not a nightmare, a beautiful dream I could never imagine in a thousand nods. There was a girl next to me who wasn't beautiful until she smiled and I felt that smile come at me in heat waves following, soaking through my body and out my finger tips in shafts of color and I knew somewhere in the world, somewhere, that there was love for me.
Jim Carroll
While a part of me wants to know, another part of me is too exhausted to ask.
Tahereh Mafi
In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is. And when you presume there’s just one right way to do things, of course the instructions begin and end exclusively with the rotisserie. But if you have to choose among an infinite number of ways to put it together then the relation of the machine to you, and the relation of the machine and you to the rest of the world, has to be considered, because the selection from many choices, the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine. That’s why you need the peace of mind.
Robert M. Pirsig
For every one person who praises you, there are a hundred who would criticize. Heed neither the one nor the hundred. It is your own opinion that truly matters.
Richelle E. Goodrich
This is all so CHILDISH PATHETIC. YOU'RE EMBARASSING. GET OVER IT GET OVER IT GET OVER IT. But he did not quite know what "it" was.
John Green
So much the better. The higher the price you have to pay, the more you will cherish it.
Lloyd C. Douglas
Living is getting knocked down time and again, then standing up time and again, and once more. It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green. Plenty difficult when the ground is dried and burned and people have connived to take even that from you. I'll sell this place, or I'll lose it. I'll go on. People who don't have hard times aren't living.
Nancy E. Turner
The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without a teacher.
Elbert Hubbard
Every life is a mystery. And every story of every life is a mystery. But it is not what happens that is the mystery. It is whether it has to happen no matter what, whether it is ordered and ordained, fixed and fated, or whether it can be missed, avoided, circumvented, passed by; that is the mystery.If she had not come along the Via Piemonte that day, would it still have happened? If she had come along the Via Piemonte that day, but ten minutes later than she did, would it still have happened? Therein lies the real mystery. And no one ever knows, and no one ever will.("For The Rest Of Her Life")
Cornell Woolrich
Jesus' love for you far outweighs your expectations of Him.
Todd Stocker
We opt to be seen as ‘right’ in the eyes of everyone else, rather than doing what’s ‘right’ in light of the situation.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You have to reach out to your inner-abuser and make peace. You can't live your life as your own worst enemy!
Bryant McGill
[Obamacare] was almost the perfect example of politics in the Bubble Era, where the time horizon for anyone with real power is always close to zero, long-term thinking is an alien concept, and even the most massive and ambitious undertakings are motivated entirely by short-term rewards. A radical reshaping of the entire economy, for two election cycles’ worth of campaign cash – that was what this bill meant. It sounds absurdly reductive to say so, but there’s no other explanation that makes any sense.
Matt Taibbi
Given the blatant deceit regarding the biologically harmful effects of antenna towers, cell phones and WiFi radiation, one can only wonder what is going on with all of the other forms of radiation.
Steven Magee
Lucille, please make them go away!” she moaned, her voice muffled.t“Do you think I am a divine being sent from the celestial realm to guard you from the harsh punishment of rousing from your slumber?” t“Is that a yes?”t“I am surrounded by idiots.
Erica Sehyun Song
Passion is the fire that can burn through fear.
Sharon Weil
We don't do well with infinity and endless possibility, and so we break things down into individual units and into stories. And then we accidentally believe in those stories, and we accidentally start acting them out. Stories about what love is, what happiness is. What men are, what women are. Unable to shape our own stories about the madness that surrounds us, we get infected with other people's stories, trying to ignore the discomfort that comes with an imperfect fit.
Jessa Crispin
We had been with the men, we had let them do what they wanted. But they would never know the parts of ourselves we hid from them - they would never sense the lack or even know there was something more they should be looking for.
Emma Cline
Life is like a mirror. Smile at it and it smiles back at you.
Peace Pilgrim
Their heartbeats rushed through his body. His arms circled around her, just so he could keep himself from falling.
Betsy Cornwell
I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them—and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, over and over. If I could have thought the words "the bright day is done and we are for the dark," I’d have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance—instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.
Mary Ann Shaffer
There are few successful adults who were not first successful children.
Alexander Chase
For many years, February was a difficult month for me after the death of my parents. My father died in February, just a week before my mother's birthday. For years their loss cast a pall over the month. I missed them terribly. But time has changed things. I see my father often in the face of my son and I run into my mother daily each time I pass the hall mirror.
Mary Morrell
Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.
Theodore Roosevelt
I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.
Charles Bukowski
′Classic′ - a book which people praise and don't read.
Mark Twain
For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are instances where I might. If immediate intervention would have circumvented the genocide in Rwanda or stopped the Janjaweed in Darfur, would I choose pacifism? Of course not. Scott Simon, the reporter for National Public Radio and a committed lifelong Quaker, has written that it took looking into mass graves in former Yugoslavia to convince him that force is sometimes the only option to deter our species' murderous imp
David Rakoff
The Cool Stuff Theory of Literature is as follows: All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what's cool. And that works all the way from the external trappings to the level of metaphor, subtext, and the way one uses words. In other words, I happen not to think that full-plate armor and great big honking greatswords are cool. I don't like 'em. I like cloaks and rapiers. So I write stories with a lot of cloaks and rapiers in 'em, 'cause that's cool. Guys who like military hardware, who think advanced military hardware is cool, are not gonna jump all over my books, because they have other ideas about what's cool.The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff.
Steven Brust
I don't actually think that ethics are derived from principles. At all." Patricia scooted a little closer again and touched his arm with a few cool fingertips. "I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel. And that's always going to depend on who you're dealing with.
Charlie Jane Anders
They loved the sea. They taught themselves to sail, to navigate and read the weather. Without their mother's knowledge and long before she thought them old enough to sail outside the harbor, they were piloting their catboat all the way to the Isles of Shoals. They were on the return leg of one such excursion when the fickle weather of early spring took an abrupt turn and the sky darkened and the sun vanished and the wind came squalling off the open sea. They were a half mile from the harbor when the storm overtook them. The rain struck in a slashing torrent and the swells hove them so high they felt they might be sent flying--then dropped them into troughs so deep they could see nothing but walls of water the color of iron. They feared the sail would be ripped away. Samuel Thomas wrestled the tiller and John Roger bailed in a frenzy and both were wide-eyed with euphoric terror as time and again they were nearly capsized before at last making the harbor. When they got home and Mary Margaret saw their sodden state she scolded them for dunces and wondered aloud how they could do so well in their schooling when they didn't have sense enough to get out of the rain.
James Carlos Blake
I'm too sexy for a grocery store. John Carter Quinn
Leigh James
Oh... Adrian, I've got one more favor to ask you. A big one." "Fondue?" he asked hopefully.
Richelle Mead
It is most important for the practice of the Christian ministry, especially in its missionary activities toward those both within and without the Christian culture, to consider pagans, humanists, and Jews as members of the latent Spiritual Community and not as complete strangers who are invited into the Spiritual Community from outside. This insight serves as a powerful weapon against ecclesiastical and hierarchical arrogance.
Paul Tillich
If I could know me I could know the universe.
Shirley Maclaine
Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.
Mark Lawrence
Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, bur raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You would be derailing your life voluntarily out of fear that it might become ruined by chance. Or you could pick up and move on. Those were the only choices.
Nicole Bernier
We insult God by speaking to Him with our lips while our hearts are far from Him.
Billy Graham
Decision making is an art only until the person understands the science.
Pearl Zhu
Confidence is knowing who you are and not changing it a bit because of someone’s version of reality is not your reality.
Shannon L. Alder
They're not doing much for themselves. I'm sure they'd rather slip away, relax their fingers and float, but they can't. They're not allowed. Effort is so painful; our knuckles are white, yet we keep clinging. The alternative is suicide- and we are too fearful for that.
Wesley Stace
Telling one lie begets another lie that begets another lie and before you know it that lie has grandkids, great grandkids and keeps growing. It’s like Lay’s Potato Chips, you can’t tell just one!
Sanjo Jendayi
Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde when I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies—my only talent—smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall—on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.
Walker Percy
I’ve decided she’s worthy of something more special, something worthy of my powers.
Kelsey Ketch
Sometimes, it's important to turn off the noise from the outside world. Sometimes, it's critical to stop the banter even within oneself. Intentional solitude and quiet can make us strong for tomorrow.
David Paul Kirkpatrick
We are the body of Christ. We are the continuing incarnation of the Divine. Look around and see Jesus. We who believe and trust and love each other are the manifestation of God in this place, at this time.
Penelope J. Stokes
I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. Love is not self denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.
Dan Barker
All of us—employers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves—are complicit in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the intern boom. Informal, barely studied, and little regulated, internships demand our scrutiny. We need a view of the entire sprawling system and its history, a glimpse of its curious blend of privilege and exploitation; we need to hear from interns themselves, and also from those who proffer internships, the people who sell them, the few who work to improve them, an the many who are unable to access them at all. only then can we consider ethical, legal alternatives to a system that is broken, a practice that is often poisonous.
Ross Perlin
I pity the man who praises God only when things go his way.
Criss Jami
Tout bonheur est un chef-d'oeuvre: la moindre erreur le fausse, la moindre hésitation l'altère, la moindre lourder le dépare, la moindre sottise l'abêtit.
Marguerite Yourcenar
Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.
Alexander Theroux
That which is horrifying to you don't do to anybody else.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
I'm as cruel as life. As cruel as love.
L.J. Smith
You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.
Anthony Bourdain
When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)
John Irving