Quotes by American Authors - Page 549

Compassion will lead you to extraordinary worlds your fear doesn't dare visit.
Scott Stabile
The 20th Century proved that there is nothing more dangerous to the health of ethnic minority communities than big government.
A.E. Samaan
Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort at the least and death at the other end ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous.
Lillian Hellman
Our Master can see it all. If you drive down a long curvy road, you don’t see the twists and turns until you are on top of them. But when you see things from a much higher perspective, you can see the whole road and the twists and the turns and the beginning and the end. In Heaven we can see where you are in relation to where you’re going and we can make things happen along the way at the intersections of life. We can create the right time and the right place and we can already see how it all ends. We can see the whole story of your life while you are living it in little bits and pieces.
Kate McGahan
Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.
Stan Slap
We knew the pain of winter rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other...
Jeffrey Eugenides
My dad’s life was magnificent, but only if I let myself see and remember more than his years of decline.
Lisa J. Shultz
Because you're my friend, wingnut.
John Green
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan
your life can change in an instant. that instant can last forever.
Laura Kasischke
Life is either always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
Edith Wharton
You can be a great man and still be a fool. Many of our country’s leaders can attest to that. Were they still living.
Rachel E. Carter
During my time in high altitude astronomy, I routinely witnessed workers breathing medical oxygen, industrial carbon dioxide, nitrogen and helium gas as part of their daily work routine.
Steven Magee
As the world continually multiplies, are we in a generation where people are divided, or people are equal?
Anthony Liccione
Most people spend years trying to feng shui their lives—to decorate and reorganize life in such a way that order and peace will finally arrive. One can decorate and redecorate for years, but a fresh coat of paint is not going to patch the cracks in your foundation—the only way to do this is through the practice of non-attachment.
Darren Main
I'm seventeen today and dressed for a party. But I can't move. I can't think, much less move. I can't breathe, much less think. This is the moment when my life will change forever.
Hilary Thompson
I suppose if I had to give a one-word answer to the question of why I read, that word would be pleasure. The kind of pleasure you can get from reading is like no other in the world.
Wendy Lesser
We are all fools blessed with the knowledge that certain events will come to pass no matter what path we take to get there. The wise ones follow their angels while they may.
Alethea Kontis
There are no telegraphs on Tralfamadore. But you're right: each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message-- describing a situation, a scene. We Tralfamadorians read them all at once, not one after the other. There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A mindset of gratitude lifts the veil of bitterness and allows you to see beauty and possibility.
Steve Maraboli
If you were to gather all the minutes wasted on insignificant, immaterial yik yak spent throughout the day and add them up, how much misspent time do you think you'd have? One hour? Two hours? Consider the sunk cost on that. It's unacceptable. One minute wasted is one minute too much.
Ari Gold
I love the night! It's not uncommon for me to see the light of a new day before closing my eyes on the old one.
Peggy Toney Horton
When an actor reaches down into his emotional well and pulls up a deeply personal response, the audience can sense something special is going on. They may not know exactly what they're seeing, but they recognize it as authentic.
Martin Sheen
Replace fear of your own inner experience with a curious, gentle, welcoming attitude—free of judgment, self-blame, and aversion.
Melanie Greenberg
I feel the terror of idleness,like a red thirst.Death isn't just an idea.
Mary Oliver
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.
Thomas Jefferson
The person with an itch can't understand why everyone isn't scratching.
Marty Rubin
I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
Malcolm X
God put us on this carnival ride, We close our eyes not knowing were it will take us next
Carrie Underwood
Only the broken beyond repair could know my anguish.
Terry a O'Neal
That was some branch. Did it have a vendetta against your t-shirt?”“Guess so.”“I hope you showed it who is boss.”“Yeah, I peed on it.
Stacey Marie Brown
Don't just survive while waiting for someone's revolution to clear your head.
Hakim Bey
I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation.
Thomas Merton
He seemed less in need of a secretary than of someone to listen to him.
Barbara W. Tuchman
No one can see your visions and dreams as clearly as you can. Purpose is the key to creation manifested through vision.
Kym Gordon Moore
Brutes leave ingratitude to man.
Walter Colton
So you killed him with what now?""I tried that Dr. Phil book at first"..."And I finished it off with the toilet seat. Just so you know, you left it up again. That drives me crazy.
Jesse Petersen
We're not words...we're people. Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose.
Shaun David Hutchinson
You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'llbet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such amiserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writerin the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unlessshe used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men thinkeverything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain sillydrivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of findingthe perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far moremushy-minded than Lily!
V.C. Andrews
The dream is free - to live it requires HUSTLE.
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
God does not want an apartment in our house. He claims our entire home from attic to cellar.
Billy Graham
Family myths are cherished by the people who--however unwittingly--have brought them into being. In my own situation, what my father was really saying to me during that last unfortunate phone call was that I had shattered our family's myth: the myth of a close and tight-knit family in which everyone was in complete agreement about everything, that is, in complete agreement with my father. I had violated one of the tenets of this myth in a way that was unforgivable to him. For that my punishment was to be expelled from the family.
Mark Sichel
What's the point in having a mind if you don't use it to make judgements?""What's the point of having a heart if you don't use it to spare others from the harsh judgements of your mind?
Sarah J Maas
This is the secret to mastering any discipline: as you conquer one, you'll find it easier to tackle another.
Jeff Goins
Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.
Kay Redfield Jamison
Do something that surprises yourself cause if you don't surprise yourself, you're not going to surprise anybody else.
Logan Henderson
No. Don't distract me with your sexy talk.
Rachel Hawkins
The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. That’s because we typically begin at the wrong starting point—ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future? But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life’s purpose.
Rick Warren
Dominance can be a tempration to division. "There are so many of us, we can afford to fight amongst ourselves.
Richard Brookhiser
Nothing was ever normal again.Many lives change like that -- all of a sudden, and forever.
Kim Stanley Robinson
I’d once heard a spiritual “riddle” that went like this: “What’s the only thingin heaven that’s the same as it was on earth?”The answer: the wounds in Jesus’ hands and feet.
Todd Burpo
Not knowing is half the fun," Aphrodite said, "Exquisitely painful isn't it? Not being sure who you love and who loves you? Oh, you kids! It's so cute I'm going to cry!
Rick Riordan
Everyone needed an obsession.
Abraham Verghese
Everything was so broken, but it would heal. Saxonia will heal. Hollownot will heal. Everything will heal.I was broken. I will heal.It is certainty that destroys the souls of men.
J.M. McDermott
I know...and I love you. But I don't think we love each other in the same way. And...I think keeping you near me, would destroy me.
S.C. Stephens
Love is what makes you bloom like a flower with a smile, beauty and fragrance.
Debasish Mridha
I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional. We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy. They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about. It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it.
Thomas Sowell
We are condemned to be free people, liberated people who must make life-defining decisions. Freedom requires choices and all choices entail value decisions.
Kilroy J. Oldster
On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.
Tao Lin
My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.
Renata Adler