Quotes by American Authors - Page 822

May my weakness not drive me to my knees in despair, but raise me up to You, Lord.
Norma Gail
I've noticed that houses take on the personality of the people who live in them. I'm not sure how it happens, but they become alive in some way, as if they have their own spirit.
Shannon Wiersbitzky
...nobody was ever really ready to turn off their mother's machine, no matter what they thought; to turn off the light of their childhood and walk away, just as if they were turning out a light and leaving a room.
Fannie Flagg
People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the endorphin level of people without the genetic basis for alcoholism; it will dramatically raise the endorphin level of people with that genetic basis. Specialists spend a lot of time formulating exotic hypotheses to account for substance abuse. Most experts point out, strong motivations for avoiding drugs; but there are also strong motivations for taking them. People who claim not to understand why anyone would get addicted to drugs are usually people who haven't tried them or who are genetically fairly invulnerable to them.
Andrew Solomon
Equal rights for all special privileges for none.
Thomas Jefferson
I didn't know love could leave the lights on all the time.
Rainbow Rowell
Blankly expressing oneself can be stronger than words.
Paul Morabito
Ah, youth!It was a beautiful night...The moon was out of orbit.The stars were awry.But everything else was exactlyas it should have been.
Roman Payne
One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears - by listening to them.
Dean Rusk
I created an icicle sculpture in the snow. White on white.
Mary E. Pearson
I am convinced that the jealous, the angry, the bitter and the egotistical are the first to race to the top of mountains. A confident person enjoys the journey, the people they meet along the way and sees life not as a competition.
Shannon L. Alder
When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins.
Sonia Rumzi
Felix believed that the answer to every problem involved penguins; but it wasn't fair to birds, and I was getting tired of teleporting them back home. Somewhere in Antarctica, a whole flock of Magellanic penguins were undergoing psychotherapy.
Rick Riordan
Ahead in the distance we could see the main gate, but there was a sea of cars, none moving, people standing, milling around, waiting nervously, perhaps fearfully, as heavily armed MPs and military working dogs searched every square inch of every vehicle, searched every bag on every person, all the while keeping a vigilant eye on the long alley we were stuck in, and on the hundreds of rooftops that overlooked that alley, wary but aware that there were people out there who would gladly hurt us again if given the chance.
Tucker Elliot
I remember it so well. Dying. It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced. I couldn't scream because my lungs were torn apart or full of blood. I don't know. I just had to lie there, trying to breathe, hoping to drop dead as quickly as possible. And the whole time, the whole time I kept thinking about how I'd spent my entire life being a coward, and how it got me nowhere. And I knew that if I had the chance to do it all again, I'd do it differently. I promised myself I'd finally stop being afraid.
Tahereh Mafi
Thousands of years hath the sun rose, In the glow of its Eastern hues,Thousands of years doth the West close It in gloom, and in tears, of its dews.Even so, in the Orient morning, Faith, true! – pure, of Allah, The One,Rose, Earth, with its beauty, adorning, And sank, Westward – and darkened, its sun.O, Believers! Have faith in Faith’s morning, Know ye, Allah knoweth the best!See, the Light of the Orient, returning Pure Islamic beams, over the West
William Ubeidullah Cunliffe
From Louisiana, he followed the hyphens in the road that blurred together toward a faraway place, bridging unrelated things as hyphens do.
Isabel Wilkerson
Controlling others is the cornerstone of dysfunctional families.
David W. Earle
Eternity was a restless bitch.
Michael L. Martin Jr.
I wanna have the truthI wanna shelter you-Demons
Imagine Dragons
What kind of person is void of compassion? A heartless one. But alas, compassion cannot exist without the endurance of afflictions.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Children need fairy tales, but it is just as essential that they have parents who tell them about their own lives, so that they can establish a relationship to the past.
Mark Kurlansky
In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone."But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.
Nayomi Munaweera
Nonconformists aren't just going against the grain; they're going against the brain. Either their brains aren't taking the easy way out to begin with, or in standing apart from their peers, these students are standing up to their biology.
Alexandra Robbins
Love may precede respect but it cannot survive the loss of it.
Joe L. Wheeler
I was used to sleeping with people because I endlessly found myself in identical situations where it was easier to just fuck them than to say no.
Marya Hornbacher
Flowers are the gift to us from nature, out gift to nature is our love.
Debasish Mridha
the only thing required to be a woman is to identifyas one.- period, end of story.
Amanda Lovelace
Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts...
Madeleine L'Engle
In my imagination, the Editor meditated in a mountain-cave, espoused the rules of grammar, and frowned upon speculative fiction.
Josh Malerman
More learning can occur when there are many obstacles then when thear are few or none. A life with difficult relationships, filled with obstacles and losses, presents the most opportunity for the soul's growth. You may have chosen the more difficult life so that you could accelerate your physical progress
Brian L. Weiss
In short, the Enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.
Timothy J. Keller
When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.
Harper Lee
When you are truly stunning, gorgeous and beautiful, you won’t have to prove that to anyone visually.
Alexandra Elle
You turn me on.” He cups my face, brushing my hair away from my eyes and a tear off my cheek.”“God, you turn me on. You're driving me crazy. I want you to need my hands on you. Do you?
Penelope Douglas
Dangerous as a lightning strike, as lethal as a pair of crisscrossing short swords, William whispered, “You’re about to find out how your liver tastes, my friend.”“I have tasted it already,” Zacharel said, his voice its usual monotone. The snowflakes began to fall in earnest, tiny at first, but growing in diameter. An arctic wind blustered around him. “It was a bit salty.”How the hell was a guy supposed to respond to that?Apparently William didn’t know, either, because he gaped at the angel. Then, “Maybe if you added a little pepper?”O-kay. It was official. William had an answer for everything.
Gena Showalter
The storm before the calm.
Cameron Conaway
The ignoramus crow of "love it or leave it" omits other viable options, such as staying and changing it.
Bryant McGill
Sometimes I come up here at night, even when I'm not fixing the clocks, just to look at the city. I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is one big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.
Brian Selznick
Once there is realization of self challenge, ego versus soul, competition with others becomes futile.
T.F. Hodge
Love brings passionate patience to create a wonderful world of beauty and magnificence.
Debasish Mridha
Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims—the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.
Paul Hoffman
There is no cure for birth or death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
That's just it. What if I can't protect you? I'll be outnumbered, outgunned. What if I can't get you out of there?
Collette West
You won't get ahead until you get off your behind.
Orrin Woodward
Self-awareness paradoxically requires an awareness of the other.
Charlie Jane Anders
I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.
Erin Morgenstern
The universe is a deep, still body of water in which we all swim. Every move that we make creates a ripple that echoes across reality – and the deeper that we swim, the more force those waves carry and the farther they may span.
Cristen Rodgers
When people run out of probable things to do, they do improbable things.
Joseph Hansen
An Englishman thinks seated a Frenchman standing an American pacing an Irishman afterward.
Austin O'Malley
And in those same years, the farmers in the developing world would come to be encouraged to use the patented descendants of the seeds their ancestors had once freely shared. And once they did that, once they bought the new seed and stopped saving seed as they had for centuries, they not only lost the old varieties but they were trapped in a system that indentured them to the seed companies. And if they resisted buying the new seeds, even if they resisted because they were not convinced about the safety of the new seeds, they were told they were causing starvation in their countries. And if they thought to demand royalties for the germplasm their ancestors once had given freely, they were called greedy.
Beth Burrows
Life is a broken thing. It's what we do with the pieces that defines us.
Corban Addison
Ask a woman if she’s ambitious and she’ll look at you as if you just asked whether she sticks pins in puppies for fun. Ask a woman if she’s competitive and she’ll look at you as if you suggested that she’s a hooker.
Gina Barreca
...If we believe that God wants us happy above all else, rather than acknowledging that our role is to serve God, we wrongly believe that God exists to serve us. God becomes a a means to our end: happiness.
Craig Groeschel
SimpleComplex systems can arisefrom simple rules.It
Rae Armantrout
It’s not that I can’t remember. It’s that I prefer not to remember, which means that I prefer not to remember what not remembering did to me the last time I did it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Enjoyable social interaction, community and laughter has a healing effect on the mind and body.
Bryant McGill
People would have to learn to deal with old monsters again. Stay in their houses. Shutter their windows.
Erin Kellison
Child, you’ve been trying to drown your sorrows for some time now. And the problem with that plan is, you can’t drown sorrows. They’re good swimmers. They’re gonna float back up to the top and be bobbing right where you left them last night.
Terri Lee
We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don't know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don't compare. The sensitive person understands that each person's ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else's. Next, they do the practical things--making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don't try to minimize what is going on. They don't attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don't say that the pain is all for the best. They don't search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don't bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct.
David Brooks