Quotes by American Authors - Page 488

I want you to be happy, and him to be happy. And yet when you walk down that aisle to meet him and join yourselves forever you will walk an invisible path of the shards of my heart, Tessa. I would give over my own life for either of yours. I perhaps that when you told me you did not love me my feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that. It is unfair to tell you this, I know, when you can do nothing about it.
Cassandra Clare
It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies (p. 171).
Patti Smith
As parents, we have the responsibility and the power to create a foundational love for nutritious foods that will influence our children's choices for decades to come, setting the stage for our children, grandchildren, and future generations to flourish in wellness and health.
Leah Borski
The last image I registered was Ethan and my hand – linked, bound and unbreakable.
Erica Sehyun Song
Why do I go outside at one a.m.and search the stars as though I'd numbered them?
Gail White
I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls; that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness. "A Plantation Christmas," 1934
Julia Peterkin
When we saw a destitute-looking man trying to sell worn flip-flops, I vowed never to complain about a job again. When I considered the steady paycheck and quality of life it provided, my past gripes - primarily boring meetings, back-biting office politics and pantyhose - were just whining.
Kristine K. Stevens
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,they are vexations to the spirit.
Max Ehrmann
Most Americans, and indeed most Europeans, would much rather ignore the fundamental conflict between Islam and their own worldview. This is partly because they generally assume that ‘religion,’ however defined, is a force for good and that any set of religious beliefs should be considered acceptable in a tolerant society. I can sympathize with that. But that does not mean that we should be blind to the potential consequences of accommodating beliefs that are openly hostile to Western laws, traditions, and values. For it is not simply a religion we have to deal with. It is a political religion many of whose fundamental tenets are irreconcilably inimical to our way of life. We need to insist that it is not we in the West who must accommodate ourselves to Muslim sensitivities; it is Muslims who must accommodate themselves to Western liberal ideals.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
It is my assessment that most police officers who spend their days driving around USA cities will have some levelof radiation sickness and this is concerning!
Steven Magee
The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity...
A. Edward Newton
Loving someone isn’t a hard task, it’s not a chore, you don’t wake up one day and decide to break their heart because you got all hot and bothered, that doesn’t happen!” he boomed.
Holly Hood
The harder you work, the luckier you are, and I worked like hell.
Gerald R. Ford
Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences -- good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage.
Brené Brown
The achievement of a happy life is not only positively good for us, it is constructively good for those around us.
Lisa Cypers Kamen
I know they're not getting divorced or anything, but when your parents argue it makes the whole universe seem like it's tipping, like everything could change if they got mad enough at each other, like the world isn't a safe place.And of course, that's true, isn't it? The world is not a safe place.
E. Lockhart
If you learn to look at the worldly madness through spiritual eyes, you will begin to see divine balance and sanity.
Bryant McGill
Sometimes we don't get second chances. Sometimes things just end.
Colleen Hoover
Where science is a dignified waltz in three-quarter time, magic is an improvised saxophone solo: all gut checks and synchronicities.
Michael G. Williams
'It would be great not to have to deal with any of this. When I found out, I wished Killian could have wiped my memories so I wouldn't have to know that all this shit exists. I was like, "Vampires can get rid of memories. What are you good for?" But it is what it is.'
Tara Lain
This is the opposite of the free market.
Bill Maher
Thanks is part to our education system, we tend to think that we're smarter than the stupid guys in funny wigs who came before us. But that's because we are mistaking technology, progress, and access to information for intelligence. We think that because we know how to use iPhones (but not build them), browse the Internet (but not understand how it works), and use Google (but not really know anything), our educational system is working just great. By the same token, we think that those dumb aristocrats who used horses to get around and didn't have electricity were neanderthals.
Glenn Beck
Leo Strauss's discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought.
William Kristol
Humanities are the instructors of enchantment.
David Brooks
You have the maturity of a 14-year-old boy!“ Kennedy hisses."And you have the chest of one.
Emma Chase
No one can take away your Natural Rights, but they can do great damage making you think they can.
J.S.B. Morse
You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.
Dean Koontz
It is through justification of one's actions that a completely guiltless life is possible.
Ashly Lorenzana
Bones just stared. "You're not a woman," he said finally. "You're the Grim Reaper with red hair!
Jeaniene Frost
Exhale the remnants/Of wounds that steal your freedom./No more prisons. Breathe.
Staci Backauskas
Megan loves orgasms so much, she would not hesitate to steal yours.
Roy Station
Some people will only value what they HAVE when it becomes what they HAD
Renita Bryant
Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults that we would like. It's the only way we grow.
George Lucas
Galvanized people can do careless things. It is in the extreme and emotion-laden moments that distance and coolness are most required. I am tempted to howl in rage. It is not my place to do so. My job is to try to dissect the event, place it in context and try to understand what has happened and why. From that, after the rage cools, plans for action can be made. Rage has its place, but actions must be taken with discipline and thought.
George Friedman
This moment is a moment of beauty.
Debasish Mridha
If you can find happiness inside of you, nothing will be able to create angst in your mind.
Debasish Mridha
No matter what happens, you can get through this day. Inhale. Focus on the word, 'relax. Exhale. Say, 'I can do this!' And then do it.
Ace Antonio Hall
A good storyteller is a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven't.
Irvin S. Cobb
Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here—solid, real, on my side—makes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick
Lauren Oliver
Are you doing life or are you living?
Dale Forehand
I know when my life is over my writings will live on, perhaps in a story or maybe a sweet love song. You see, I do not write for glory or to get anything for free. I just sit down and I write, because it makes so much sense to me.
Terri F. Williams
By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.
Stephen King
Tobin Hart calls play “the holy work of children” that helps them “find and define themselves.”[2]
Tobin Hart
Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
William James
My plan is to continue teaching many more years than the 32 years I've already enjoyed and continue writing, and promoting my books and websites if it's God will.
Ana Monnar
You're the one who has to live with your choice," she says. "Everyone else will get over it, move on, no matter what you decide. But you never will.
Veronica Roth
The treachery of demons is nothing compared to the betrayal of an angel.
Brenna Yovanoff
I'm sorry I started all this by trying to fly and I'd take it back if I could but I can't, so please think of it from my point of view: if you die I will have a dead brother and it will be me instead of you who suffers.Justin thought of his brother on that warm summer day, standing up on the windowsill holding both their futures, light and changeable as air, in his outstretched arms.Of course, Justin thought, I'm part of his fate just as he's part of mine. I hadn't considered it from his point of view. Or from the point of view of the universe, either. It's just a playing field crammed full of cause and effect, billions of dominoes, each knocking over billions more, setting off trillions of actions every second. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and my brother in Luton thinks he can fly.The child nodded. A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen.
Meg Rosoff
We try to show that the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is indeed possible according to our nature and those requirements. This endeavor belongs to political philosophy as reconciliation; for seeing that the conditions of a social world at least allow for that possibility affects our view of the world itself and our attitude toward it. No longer need it seem hopelessly hostile, a world in which the will to dominate and oppressive cruelties, abetted by prejudice and folly, must inevitably prevail. None of these may ease our loss, situated as we may be in a corrupt society. But we may reflect that the world is not in itself inhospitable to political justice and its good. Our social world might have been different and there is hope for those at another time and place
John Rawls
Another Chief remembered that since the Great Father promised them that they would never be moved they had been moved five times. "I think you had better put the Indians on wheels," he said sardonically, "and you can run them about whenever you wish.
Dee Brown
The younger man stepped away from the table and came toward me, his whole posture radiating menace. Every Darre woman is taught to deal with such behavior from men. It is an animal trick that they use, like dogs ruffling their fur and growling. Only rarely is there an actual threat behind it, and a woman's strength lies in discerning when the threat is real and when it is just hair and noise.
N K Jemisin
Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.
Anthony Bourdain
We might be all alone in the world, en effet, but that doesn't mean we have to be lonely.
Aria Beth Sloss
[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in men's clothing, thus living underground, safe (...). The presence of women disguising themselves as men dictates that the play be a comedy; women remaining in their frocks, a tragedy. In four great tragedies -Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear- almost all the women die (...). How much the women have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their enviroment makes a large difference. Once Rosalind [disguised as a man in As You Like It] has run away from the court, she has no institutional structures to deal with. Ophelia [in her frocks] is surrounded tightly by institutional structures of family, court, and politics; only by going mad can be get out of it all.
Tina Packer
I like pink."Lucius sniffed. "It's just red's sorry, weak cousin.
Beth Fantaskey
Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it. And even then your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and of course, the fact that I have the option to leave. I am allowed to see the ocean.
Rachel Corrie
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples.
Stephen Crane
The tricky thing about the hood is that you’re always working, working, working, and you feel like something’s happening, but really nothing’s happening at all.
Trevor Noah
Ah, the deliciousness of discovering a masterwork. My heart begins to lift. I can see myself sitting all day in my chair, immersed in lives, plots, and sentences, intoxicated by words and chimeras, paralyzed by satisfaction and contentment, reading until the deepening twilight, until I can no longer make out the words, until my mind begins to wander, until my aching muscles are no longer able to keep the book aloft. Joy is the anticipation of joy.
Rabih Alameddine
The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.
Noam Chomsky