Quotes by American Authors - Page 502

The easy path is seldom the right path.
Toni Sorenson
Euripides "questioned everything. He was a misanthrope who preferred books to men.
Edith Hamilton
I had worked my way through a thousand problems, like when the tar paper bulged on the corners so I used a strap wrapped around the whole house and ratcheted it tight to attach the trim; I had figured that out without using a book, and that was just one of a bunch of ideas that had saved the day. I liked it; I was falling in love with the way my kneecaps knew how to hold a piece of plywood halfway up till I could grab the underside with my hand. I like the way the little house was taking shape, and the way it seemed to double-dog dare me to step in... move in.
Dee-Williams
Questions from earlier circle like buzzards. Am I running away or moving forward?
Doug Cooper
I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was.That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should havespent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'dhave had to change his whole philosophy. The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its finethoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch howeasily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain.
Janet Fitch
My help—it’s not a light switch you can turn on and off. My help starts right now, and after this point you don’t get to tell me that you don’t want it anymore. Understand? You had a chance to walk away, Alice, and you didn’t take it. Now it’s time to play the game.
Elle Lothlorien
In the midst of all of this perfect beauty, timeless since the days of Eve, it's the touch of God creating miracles, if in your heart you just believe.
Lisa Mischelle Wood
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
Ashleigh Brilliant
I was not beautiful, but I believed I had the possibility of beauty in me.
Michael Cunningham
J. E. Littlewood, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote about the law of truly large numbers in his 1986 book, "Littlewood's Miscellany." He said the average person is alert for about eight hours every day, and something happens to the average person about once a second. At this rate, you will experience 1 million events every thirty-five days. This means when you say the chances of something happening are one in a million, it also means about once a month. The monthly miracle is called Littlewood's Law.
David McRaney
When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.
Barack Obama
...But living creatures are idiosyncratic. They are created in such a way that they can actualize only what their microscopic minds wish for. The concept of limitless is bound heavily by the minor actualization of what perfection is...
Lionel Suggs
I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa.
Britney Spears
To buy a cake... to howl at the moon... to know true happiness... I am happy.
C. JoyBell C.
Music is energy. A mood, atmosphere. Feeling.
Kurt Cobain
In the marathon of life, there is no finish line.
Bill Courtney
Taking time to create memories will stamp moments that will forever be etched on your heart and on the hearts of your children.
Eve M. Harrell
Faith is a fine inventionWhen gentlemen can see,But microscopes are prudentIn an emergency.
Emily Dickinson
I missed the future.
John Green
Biological harm from electromagnetic interference (EMI) is the dirty secret of the electrical, electronics and wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation industries.
Steven Magee
From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms.
Peter S Beagle
Individuals who are focused on becoming better are individuals not easily offended. You can only offend those who are not on a path of constant growth and enlightenment.
C. JoyBell C.
I invite each of you to let go of your fears for just one day and say YES to life… say YES to love… say YES to You! You can always go back to saying ‘no’ another day.
Alaric Hutchinson
A grief travels with us as far as we carry it.
Marty Rubin
It is clear that the protective functions of workplace health and safety have transferred to the workers through the process of corporate government deregulation and reduced funding of relevant government departments.
Steven Magee
Failing doesn't make us a failure. But not trying to do better, to be better, does make us fools.
Wes Moore
Whatever the depth of our darkness, God navigated it eons before it was dark. And whatever the duration of our nights, God was there long before it ever turned to night. Therefore, despite our frequent feelings to the contrary, there is no place we might be where God was not lovingly waiting for us an eternity before we got there.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Yet from time to time we are betrayed by language, if not in the words themselves, in the rhythm with which we deliver our words. Over time, I would learn to listen for those wonderful moments when people spoke a kind of personal music, which left a rhythmic architecture of who they were. I would be much more interested in those rhythmic architectures than in the information they might or might not reveal.
Anne Deavere Smith
There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory but boys it is all hell.
William T. Sherman
It's hard to trust your child to find his or her own path, especially when we're told everyday by professionals that children must fit into rigid boxes. We all want to give our kids the best opportunities we can, which is why it feels like such a disservice if we don't push them in the "right" direction. Celebrating you children's passions rather than redirecting them, especially when those passions don't line up neatly with a checklist for future success, can feel like jumping off a cliff. It certainly did for me. But that leap of faith is necessary if your kids are going to fly.
Kristine Barnett
If somebody'd of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty-year old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order and recriminations, they'd of thought the whole bunch was crazy as loons.
Ken Kesey
The difficulty was not that of following a moral principle at personal cost; the difficulty was that of knowing what to do when there is more than one principal, and when the principles clash.
Elton Trueblood
I'm telling you a lie in a vicious effort that you will repeat my lie over and over until it becomes true
Lady Gaga
And He was the one who invented marriage so that the blazing fire of romantic love could become something even more beautiful - a pulsing, red-hot ember of covenant love in marriage.Why did He do it? For the same reason that He made sunsets and mountain ranges and fireflies! Because He's good. Because He wants to give us a million different opportunities to see just how wonderful He is.
Joshua Harris
Death always wins.
Kelly Creagh
Thanksgiving is an attitude that must be rooted in the ‘gift of life’ if we ever hope to be thankful for the ‘gifts’ of life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Either you run the day or the day runs you.
Jim Rohn
They had been Vince's brothers in a way, and Race was his son, and you couldn't drive a man's family to the earth and expect to live.
Joe Hill
Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.
T.F. Hodge
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence
T.S Eliot
There’s a really stupid saying: When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade. Well, I have a better saying: When life hands you a lemon, shove that lemon up its stupid butt.
Gena Showalter
The realm of liberation is absolutely incommensurable with the relativities of higher and lower, better and worse, gain and loss, since these are all disadvantages of the ego.
Alan W. Watts
If we have a relationship with Jesus Christ and believe the Bible to be the Word of God, then we have no room for wallowing in the swamp of self-pity.
Lois Mowday Rabey
My father helped you with that. . that thing you do?” “Yes. Your father helped me with that peacemaking thing I do that keeps you happily killing for a living.
G.A. Aiken
Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.
Hermann Broch
In the mid–path of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood,' writes Dante, in The Divine Comedy, beginning a quest that will lead to transformation and redemption. A journey through the dark of the woods is a motif common to fairy tales: young heroes set off through the perilous forest in order to reach their destiny, or they find themselves abandoned there, cast off and left for dead. The road is long and treacherous, prowled by wolves, ghosts, and wizards — but helpers also appear along the way, good fairies and animal guides, often cloaked in unlikely disguises. The hero's task is to tell friend from foe, and to keep walking steadily onward.
Terri Windling
You are who you think you are.
Debasish Mridha
...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ... Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.
Chris Crutcher
I took care of the next guy in line while I checked out the girl who was boxing up a pecan pie and decorating it with some sort of fancy ribbon. Watching her wouldn’t be a hardship. She made the retro waitress uniform look good. If she looked as good from the front as she did from the back, maybe I would ask her out.She turned around and handed the box to the customer at the counter and my world turned sideways. It was Delia. My little sister’s annoying best friend. The girl who was practically a member of my family. When had she become hot? I blinked, hoping maybe I’d seen wrong. Nope. Same blonde hair with hot pink stripes, which I’d always thought was stupid. Now, wearing the Pie Princess tiara and some sort of glittery lip gloss she looked wild and kind of sexy. And that was just wrong.
Chris Cannon
You need my help? What for? Bread, cash, a fake identity to help you slip sideways through the cracks? Tell me what you need, tell me why I should help, and I'll see what I can do. In memory of Elphaba. You knew her." Her head titled again, but up, this time, and it was to keep the sudden wetness from spilling into her carefully colored false eyelashes. "You knew my Elphie!
Gregory Maguire
A real friend would have given you a drink by now.""Looks like an old friend just did.
Debbie K. Lum
The conventional public opposition of 'liberal' and 'conservative' is, here as elsewhere, perfectly useless. The 'conservatives' promote the family as a sort of public icon, but they will not promote the economic integrity of the household or the community, which are the mainstays of family life. Under the sponsorship of 'conservative' presidencies, the economy of the modern household, which once required the father to work away from home - a development that was bad enough - now requires the mother to work away from home, as well. And this development has the wholehearted endorsement of 'liberals,' who see the mother thus forced to spend her days away from her home and children as 'liberated' - though nobody has yet seen the fathers thus forced away as 'liberated.' Some feminists are thus in the curious position of opposing the mistreatment of women and yet advocating their participation in an economy in which everything is mistreated.
Wendell Berry
I’m not familiar with this word you were repeating before…‘cojones’, was it?”I blushed as Dominick patted me on the back. “Way to introduce him to the vernacular, Palta.
M.A. George
You are my heaven. I just never knew I’d find it here on Earth.
Nancee Cain
Across from her, Hunter devoured her meal even more completely than she had. Sinclair watched her sink sharp teeth into the chicken bone, heard it snap, then the soft grunt of satisfaction. She made soft sucking sounds then emptied her mouth of the tiny ground up remains on a corner of her dish. Hunter ate with rabbit-like intensity, biting and sucking and spitting in an even rhythm until all that was left on the plate was a small brown and beige pile of ground bones. She finally looked up and caught Sinclair staring.
Fiona Zedde
I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.
Stephenie Meyer
Whatever it is in your life that is separating you from Jesus Christ, he knows about it. He longs for you to come to him now, so he can lend you his strength to overcome your weaknesses. His love is there for you, as solid and sturdy as a brick. He doesn't turn away in disgust when you make a mistake, no matter how many times you've made that mistake before. If you'll let him, he'll pick you up and dust you off and say 'Try again. I know you'll do better next time.' And because he never gives up on you, you will try again, and eventually, with his help, you'll conquer whatever it is that brought you down.
Emily Watts
...one half leaning in, one half pulling away.
Jodi Picoult
In our twenties we have conflicts. We think everything is either-or, black or white: we are caught between them and we lose all our energy in the conflicts. My answer, later on in maturity, was to do them all. Not to exclude any, not to make a choice. I wanted to be everything. And I took everything in, and the more you take in, the more strength you find waiting to accomplish things and to expand your life, instead of the other (which is what we have been taught to do) which is to look for structure and to fear change, above all to fear change. Now I didn't fear change.
Anaïs Nin
The boys he met at Annandale only understood one kind of woman. They needed to be coddled and cooed over as their own mothers had done their whole lives.
Thomm Quackenbush