Quotes by American Authors - Page 546

I knew how severe I had been and how bad things had been. The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one who poverty bothers.
Ernest Hemingway
The biggest question, transcending physics and the realm of how he was able to do the extraordinary things he did, remained firmly rooted in the realm of metaphysics and begged an answer to why he could do these things.
Sol Luckman
When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.
Criss Jami
I have nothing now but praise for my life. I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more...
Maurice Sendak
Ladies and Gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
Diane Arbus
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them...
Annie Dillard
You lost your ability to choose the moment you started to use your eyes to see, and your heart to feel. Choice has become nothing but an illusion for you.
Lionel Suggs
It's time to get healed. It's time to confess. Falling for the bait doesn't make you the worst person in the world. You were snared. You were hooked. But you don't have to stay that way. Now is the time to deal with the shackles that keep you enslaved. Today you can leave the prison that sexual immorality has created from your past mistakes. Hear your Father's voice call out to you above the noisy clamor of our culture. He says, "I love you. You're free to go now. Sexual sin has no hold on you.
Craig Groeschel
I must be besotted,” he said evenly. “I have the imbecilic idea that you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Except for your coiffure,” he added, with a disgusted glance at the coils and plumes and pearls. “That is ghastly.”She scowled. “Your romantic effusions leave me breathless.
Loretta Chase
You’re a tough guy, but I’m a nightmare wrapped in the apocalypse.
James S.A. Corey
Survival, it is called. Often it is accidental, sometimes it is engineered by creatures or forces that we have no conception of, always it is temporary.
Wallace Stegner
There is much: recognition of the fact that human beings live indeterminate and incomplete lives; recognition of the power exerted over and upon us by our own habits and memories; recognition of the ways in which the world presses in on all of us, for it is an intractable place where many things go awry and go astray, where one may all-too-easily lose one’s very self. The epistemological argument is framed by faith, but it stands on its own as an account of willing, nilling, memory, language, signs, affections, delight, the power and the limits of minds and bodies. To the extent that a prideful philosophy refuses to accept these, Augustine would argue, to that extent philosophy hates the human condition itself.
Jean Bethke Elshtain
From the moment any of us utter our first goo-goo's and ga-ga's, we are as good as gone. At that precise instant, any possibility that It will ever arise in us is irrevocably crushed. If any proof is needed, consider how immune to strong emotion our society has grown. At your next visit to the local funeral parlor, glance at the mourners, who can more properly be defined as spectators. Notice how they smell, how well-dressed and dignified they are. This is because viewing the dead has become overwhelmingly acceptable as a social function. Yes, even the corpse is part of the festivities, lying there as the guest of honor, laid out in his best clothes, pumped full of chemicals and smeared with make-up as the patrons file by and nurse their long buried consciences with silk handkerchiefs.
Donald Jeffries
I remember one bobcat they had in here - now bobcats are an endangered species in this neck of the woods - they'd caught it somewhere and they must have put that cat through a dozen rounds of burn experiments before they finally determined that it was utterly useless to them. Like an empty beer can. And then you know what they did to it? Claudius was late for a lunch date so rather thanput the destroyed but still breathing animal to sleep, he picked it up by its hind legs and simply smashed its head against a wall repeatedly until it was dead. How can I forget it: I was the one told to clean up the mess. The head dented in. The eyes slowly closing. The once proud claws hanging down, stunned and lifeless, the utter senselessness of it all, and the hate, a hatred that was consummated in me which is as dangerous a hormone, or chemical, or portion of the brain, as any neutron bomb. Except that I didnt know how to explode. I was like a computer without a keyboard, a bird without wings. Roaring inside. I wanted to kill that man. To do unto others what they had done unto me. I was that bobcat, you better believe it.
Michael Tobias
I stare at him, trying to comprehend what he’s done. He saved Magiano from falling overboard. He saved me. He is taking this mission seriously, however much he loathes us.“Maybe next time,” he says to me with that smile, “you won’t be so lucky.
Marie Lu
Building a naval power takes generations, not so much to develop the necessary technology as to pass along the accumulated experience that creates good admirals.
George Friedman
I couldn't hear anything or anyone, there was only the sound of our sex and the smell of books.
Juliet Gauvin
It may be that the strongest instinct of the human race, stronger than sex or hunger, is curiosity: the absolute need to know. It can and often does motivate a lifetime, it kills more than cats, and the prospect of satisfying it can be the most exciting of emotions.
Jack Finney
What we love we are.
Robert Lowell
Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.
David Wong
Your mindset serves as the operating system for your entire life’s experience.
Susan C.Young
We often know information but not the epistemology of that information.
Debasish Mridha
Could there be a snare in too much beauty? Could there be too much expectation of good, and too much fiath? Could ever there be too much love?And could love require lies?
C.J. Cherryh
If positivity is not your mindset, then reset
Josh Stern
that's exactly the good thing about the Injun life--you don't have to stop and think about whether or not you're 'happy'--which in my opinionis a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks
Jim Fergus
Money is our servant not our God. Let it serve you not the other way around.
Debasish Mridha
The heart dances with joy when you're sharing.
Debasish Mridha
Should we hold back from loving people because we carry the wounds of a few?
Sydney Scrogham
I've come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We're just in this physical body till we go back to spirit.
Kent Haruf
The best works of art are never innocuous: they alter the viewer's perceptual predictions. It is only when the patterns of our vision are disrupted that we truly pay attention and must ask ourselves what we are looking at.
Siri Hustvedt
I'm not likely to forget someone slapping my butt with a big piece of wood.
Cherise Sinclair
As you know from our trips to Belmont Park in San Diego, I can scream like a girl when required.” he said.Angie laughed then she grabbed him by the face and planted a kiss on the lips so fierce, Mel wondered if it was Angie’s way of putting a lip-lock protective spell on her man. She hoped it was and she hoped it worked.
Jenn McKinlay
Logic is an organized way to go wrong with confidence. We should all know by now that a logical course is not always the right one.
Charles F. Kettering
How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to?
Anthony Robbins
Ellie, you need to understand," he said softly. "I exist only to serve you and fight by your side. Whether that fighting is to preserve your life or to make sure you smile, that is what I am built to do. You're all I have, and I will watch over you forever.
Courtney Allison Moulton
Good writing should help us see the world in new ways, it should crack open our generosity towards each other. That's what I hope my work does anyway. I want someone to read it and know that they aren't alone in the universe. I want my words to act as connective tissue.
Patrick Hicks
In my experience there is only one motivation and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
Jane Smiley
Fight for what you want because forever is a long time to be a quitter.
Shannon L. Alder
America is the promised land, because each generation bequeathed to its children a promise, a promise that they might not come to enjoy but which they fully expected their offspring to fulfill. So the words 'all men are created equal' took a life of its own, ultimately destined to end slavery and enfranchise women. And the words 'equal protection' and 'due process' inevitably led to the end of the words 'separate but equal,' ensuring that the walls of segregation would crumble, whether at the lunch counter or at the voting booth.
Joe Biden
Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.
Lemony Snicket
Learn from the past, prepare for the future, and perform in the moment." (Moments: Making Your Life Count For What Matters Most, Mike Van Hoozer)
Mike Van Hoozer
We don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it?
Erik Qualman
I have always found that effort is most easily produced when performed for the benefit of something external to ourselves.
Chris Matakas
We are stronger than we think. We have emotional, spiritual and even physical resources at our disposal. We may get knocked down, but we don’t have to stay down.
Steve Goodier
dragonflies circled me, the sun knifing off the brilliant blues and yellows of their bodies.
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
The fig tree grows its flowers strangely inside out, concealed within the soft interior of the fruit. Erszébet imagines the fig's hidden fairy weight of seeds, grown in sweetness that is also a darkness. Like treasure in a cave.
Jody Shields
Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.
Walter H. Cottingham
The essence of the Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha) is about identifying the cause of our suffering & alleviating it.
Allan Lokos
American culture, perhaps more than any other, prizes individualism. Our narratives of art, politics, and business idolize the person who triumphs against the odds, with only himself or herself to answer to. The lone wolf. The stranger in town. The maverick. The plucky kid. The Final Girl. You've only got yourself, in the end. It's all up to you.
Andi Zeisler
All human beings desire to be in a better space and a better place. We all want a peaceful and prosperous life for ourselves and our families. When you don't manage your emotions in high stress, high-pressure situations, you get the opposite of what you want. The domino affect impacts how you live, eat and provide for your family. Is it worth it? Never. Control your emotions. Manage your choices. Your life is depending on it.
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
The flow of the movement of change will be impeded wherever healing has not occurred.
Sharon Weil
Could any woman live every day with that level of masculinity?
Larry McMurtry
I read nonfiction."She reared back as if offended.
Anne Osterlund
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The smell of hyacinths in the summer night air. At this moment, standing here with a boy I just met who already feels like home, I am overwhelmed with city love.
Susane Colasanti
Do we follow the road life’s placed before us? Or do we dare step up and forge an exceptional path. A path fraught with struggle and sacrifice, Yet one whose outcome places us in destiny’s arms.
Christopher Babson
Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power and is often in point of fact useless. Just as a leader doesn't need intelligence a man in my job doesn't need too much of it either.
Henry Kissinger
Magnus's ship would sail that night...His interest in the ship and his thoughts of an adventure to come made him regret his departure less, but even so, he stood at the rail as the ship departed into the night waters.
Cassandra Clare
At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.
Alasdair MacIntyre
That year, a middle-aged acquaintance asked me what my favorite book was and I said "On the Road." He smiled, said, "That was my favorite book at sixteen." At the time , I thought he was patronizing me, that it was going to be my favorite book forever and ever, amen. But he was right. As an adult, I'm more of a Gatsby girl-more tragic, more sad, just as interested in what America costs as what it has to offer.
Sarah Vowell