Quotes by American Authors - Page 518

When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.
Woody Allen
It's a simple formula do your best and somebody might like it.
Dorothy Baker
Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.
Veronica Roth
The things you want are always possible; it is just that the way to get them is not always apparent. The only real obstacle in your path to a fulfilling life is you, and that can be a considerable obstacle because you carry the baggage of insecurities and past experience.
Les Brown
And my mother, whose radius of travel was short, tied the letters with ribbon and kept them in her desk, When you get the chance, she said to me, "go.
Frances Mayes
All people want to belong to some sort of hierarchy. Allow me to explain. The rich want to be the richest; the poor want to be the smartest; those who are both rich and smart want to be the better persons; the better persons want to go to heaven; those who are in heaven will look down upon those who are in hell... there is always some kind of hierarchy desired by everyone; even by those who claim the opposite of this. So how do you find true divinity? Divinity is found in those who reach down low; because it is those who are above who must reach down low, while it is those who are below who must constantly reach for what is above! And this is divinity. What is divine, is what will have a curiosity in what is below. There is no fear of becoming "tainted"; because what is lesser can never really taint what is greater. it is what is greater than is able to transform what is lesser. The alchemist must first find the mud, pick it up, before she is able to transform it into diamond.
C. JoyBell C.
Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them.
Rita Rudner
Besides, my life is a catastrophe. It's a catastrophe to be without a voice.
E B White
I will call bullshit on that so many times that the word bullshit will lose all meaning. -Milo
Cora Carmack
Corporate governments are as corrupt as their law enforcement departments.
Steven Magee
I think this is a very important thing to understand about Christianity. It was from its very beginnings, it seems, a religion of great quarrels and wars, and it wooed the power of temporal authorities, and made them part of itself in the hope of resolving through sheer force its many arguments.
Anne Rice
Life becomes empty if we fill it with worthless thoughts and deeds.
Debasish Mridha
He stopped and leaned against a pole and looked up at the deaf and swollen sky. It was a movement of dark shapes, a hurrying, a running.He closed his eyes. ("Hunger")
Charles Beaumont
How he could be a good user of LSD," I asked, "And know about the spiritual dimension - all that sort of thing - and still be a crook? I don't understand.""Then it's time you did. Psychedelic drugs don't change you - they don't change you character - unless you want to be changed. They enable change; they can't impose it...
Alexander Shulgin
How I wish you could have known me in my strength.
Marilynne Robinson
If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct your life will be safe expedient and thin.
Katharine Butler Hathaway
Luck is largely a matter of paying attention.
Susan M. Dodd
You and I may have never met, but I already know so much of what you want: to be happy and feel valued. We all want love, connection, respect, confidence, health, vitality, passion, kindness, and success.
Susan C.Young
Fifteen minutes later, Betsy came thundering down the stairs. "I'm going to the mall with Sierra to see a movie."Michael leaned forward, switched off the television. "Can you please rephrase that in the form of a question?""Sure. Can I have some money?
Kristin Hannah
And all I want is to hold her and make the rest of the world go away.
Mary E. Pearson
I am not for the left or the right, but for what is right over the wrong. I am not an elephant or a donkey, but a lion that stands only with Truth and my conscience.
Suzy Kassem
Heartbreak was a bitch.
Jenna Harte
[W]e wouldn't want to read a book about a perfect character who never struggles with character flaws, a difficult past, or interpersonal conflict. Writers can powerfully connect with readers when they venture to these thin places of pain and brokenness because readers can see themselves in the pain and want to journey from pain and struggle toward redemption or some kind of resolution.
Ed Cyzewski
In Hollywood all marriages are happy. It's trying to live together afterwards that causes problems.
Shelley Winters
See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.
Noam Chomsky
Training moments occur when both parents and children do their jobs. The parent's job is to make the rule. The child's job is to break the rule. The parent then corrects and disciplines. The child breaks the rule again, and the parent manages the consequences and empathy that then turn the rule into reality and internal structure for the child.
Henry Cloud
Gina Rodgers raised her hand, triggering a class-wide bristle. Everyone wanted to impress Mr. Tipton, but it was Gina who always raised her hand first, like he was going to fall in love with her for her 4.3 GPA or something.
Mira Jacob
Th' first thing to have in a libry is a shelf.Fr'm time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure.But th' shelf is th' main thing.
Finley Peter Dunne
There will always be the facts of life to contend with, and there are times when the facts can become overwhelming. Yet, there is a poem at the heart of things and a mythic story in the heart of each of us. At certain times it is the poetry of life and the mythic imagination of the soul that become necessary in order to heal the wounds inflicted by an excess of reason or an overuse of force. When we unfold the story wound within our souls and untie the knots within us, we add presence to the world and contribute to the spirit of life in a specific and authentic way.
Michael Meade
The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.
Carl Sagan
No country can police corruption in other countries when it itself is not free from corruption. You cannot clean a dirty wall with dirty hands.
Suzy Kassem
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
Edith Wharton
I was surrounded by hundreds of drowned children, heads in the water, their little feet in the air.All the little duckies, with their heads in the waterHeads in the water.It was my punishment. Honor lost. Everything lost.Shame is a hunter.My shame was all around me now.
Ruta Sepetys
Your brain is a forest,And the nerves are trees.When the branches touch,Snaps jumps between the leaves.
Rich Shapero
Light and air — what means wherewith to conjure up illusions and deceive the senses!
John C. Van Dyke
I don't believe in any actual thinking God that marks the fall of every bird in Australia or every bug in India, a God that records all of our sins in a big golden book and judges us when we die - I don't want to believe in a God who would deliberately create bad people and then deliberately send them to roast in a hell He created-but I believe there has to be something
Stephen King
Do you know what the greatest test is? Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning?
David Halberstam
Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?
Robert Jackson Bennett
Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.
Ray Bradbury
America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.
Fulton J. Sheen
In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly—even though I’d been empowered to have my old college finally address my “horrific trauma,” make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party that brought the closure and empowerment I’d hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring.
Aspen Matis
To choose not to be part of a team or religion does not make me non-religious; for my religion is Truth and I am very much in love with God. I do not need to align myself with a specific messenger if I already understand God’s message. And the way I think is not considered ‘New Age’, since common sense is not new. So long as you act and speak with love and truth in you, and are good to your fellow man — in that you treat everybody as you would want yourself to be treated, your heart will stand by God regardless of the label you have assigned to your mind.
Suzy Kassem
People are gonna disappoint you sometimes. We’re flawed creatures. Not one of us is perfect, not even you, and you’ve gotta let people mess up and then you’ve gotta forgive them. That’s just life.
Jenny Han
But when adults speak up for the vulnerable and the weak, working and demanding that safety and respect prevail, God's little lambs are protected and nourished. They know they are not abandoned; they are loved. And the world becomes a little more like heaven as a result.
Wess Stafford
There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: "In the long run we are all dead." And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.
Henry Hazlitt
‪I Have No Sympathy For Gossip Boys & Girls ‬
Genereux Philip
Scepticism is never certain of itself, being less a firm intellectual position than a pose to justify bad behavior.
Fulton J. Sheen
Trust me, darlin', I've got skills for every room in the house.
Avery Flynn
When people confide their deep hurt to you these days, you are at a loss for what to say. A long time ago, you used to say, "I'll be praying for you," and you always meant to do that, to take those heavy burdens off their shoulders and hoist them up to the Lord. But the truth is, you usually forgot. Usually, this was the thing you said to end the conversation, a nice way to say, "I'm sorry. I can no longer handle the depth of your pain. I don't want to talk about this anymore.
Addie Zierman
Kissing Travis was like licking raw cookie dough off the spoon; it might be bad for her, but it was too delicious to care.
Codi Gary
It’s traumatizing to think that a best friend could become just a friend. That’s because there is virtually no difference between an acquaintance and a friend. But the gulf between a friend and a best friend is enormous and profound. And if I look at it that way, I think I can see the value of a wedding. If you’re my best friend and the only way I get to have dinner with you is by traveling thousands of miles, selecting a chicken or fish option, and wearing a dress in the same shade of lavender as six other girls, I will do that. I won't love it. But I love you.
Mindy Kaling
If you choose not to live self-responsibly, you count on others to make up your default. No one abjures self-responsibility on a desert island.
Nathaniel Branden
I live in a world where people are guided by limited imagination; only facts that are favorable to them are truths. They are unable to live anyway else. When a person finds out that a fact is against them, it's usually because it's the truth. No one tries to step outside of the edge of reason. No one tries to step beyond the edge of the world.
Lionel Suggs
i find nothing more depressing than optimism.
Paul Fussell
\“Self-confident people are mindful about spending their time, energy, and interests on things that truly matter.
Susan C.Young
At least that left hope for him. Except "Beauty and the Geek" wasn’t exactly the proper translation of the popular fairy tale.
Kelly Moran
We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play.
Charles E. Schaefer
There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.
Theodore Roosevelt
I just slept for fifteen hours straight. Yes, writing a musical is THAT exhausting!
Christy Hall
Given the lethal enormity of sin and the inestimable value of a single soul, a baby in a manger and a man on a cross makes more sense that anything else I will ever be able to possibly imagine.
Craig D. Lounsbrough