Quotes by American Authors - Page 864

Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology.
René Girard
Believe that God is strong enough to save your children, no matter how you fail.
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick
I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you'll say: ... Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters.
Cheryl Strayed
The bible is an instruction book you don't want to skip reading.
Amanda Penland
We all act as independent learners in charge of designing our autodidactic curricula. Reading the books written by the prophetic genius of history including the literary masterpieces and philosophical treatises awakens the mind. Reading can act as a gateway drug leading to writing and expansion of a personal state of conscious awareness.
Kilroy J. Oldster
The student is to read history actively not passively.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Calling resists privatization by insisting on the totality of faith. Calling resists politicization by demanding a tension with every human allegiance and association. Calling resists polarization by requiring an attitude toward, and action in, society that is inevitably transforming because it is constantly engaged. Grand Christian movements will rise and fall. Grand campaigns will be mounted and grand coalitions assembled. But all together such coordinated efforts will never match the influence of untold numbers of followers of Christ living out their callings faithfully across the vastness and complexity of modern society.
Os Guinness
Tis better to have love and lustThan to let our apparatus rust.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Corporate humans would be regarded as a cancerous growth on the Earth by nature.
Steven Magee
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
Thomas Jefferson
At its root, the logic is that of the Grand Inquisitor, who bitterly assailed Christ for offering people freedom and thus condemning them to misery. The Church must correct the evil work of Christ by offering the miserable mass of humanity the gift they most desire and need: absolute submission. It must “vanquish freedom” so as “to make men happy” and provide the total “community of worship” that they avidly seek. In the modern secular age, this means worship of the state religion, which in the Western democracies incorporates the doctrine of submission to the masters of the system of public subsidy, private profit, called free enterprise. The people must be kept in ignorance, reduced to jingoist incantations, for their own good. And like the Grand Inquisitor, who employs the forces of miracle, mystery, and authority “to conquer and hold captive for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness” and to deny them the freedom of choice they so fear and despise, so the “cool observers” must create the “necessary illusions” and “emotionally potent oversimplifications” that keep the ignorant and stupid masses disciplined and content.
Noam Chomsky
The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.
Emma Goldman
A person without a philosophy for living is at the tender mercy of other people.
Kilroy J. Oldster
It is a great comfort to a rambling people to know that somewhere there is a permanent home--perhaps it is the most final of the comforts they ever really know.
Ben Robertson
Scribble out the world since it was not to your liking and make up a new one, something better.
Alice McDermott
The path that reveals itself to you is the path you are meant to take.
Toni Sorenson
To keep the fire burning brightly there's one easy rule: Keep the two logs together near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart - about a finger's breadth - for breathing room. Good fire good marriage same rule.
Marnie Reed Crowell
I said, you're the beat of my heart, the breath in my body, the light in my soul.
J D ROBB
I'll never leave this Earth without a fight or at least pretend to for all of those in sight.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
When we would say 'No way,' he would say, 'My way.' Then the ones who doubted would scramble to salvage the blessing. And the one who gave it would savor the surprise.
Max Lucado
Why does it scare me to think I might be ordinary? I remember when I started first grade and I could hardly pay attention for fear I wouldn't learn to read and write. I didn't want to be like everyone else. I didn't want to have to learn. I wanted to know everything already
Margaret Sartor
When you step up to being excellent, use hard work and commitment as the two powerful forces they are. By being persistent, over time you will earn gleaming success.
Mark F. LaMoure
Never curse a fall. The ground is where humility lives.
Yasmin Mogahed
Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list - a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.
Gary Keller
No! You stay alive! Submit, do you hear? You're strong, you survive. You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you . . . (Hawkeye / The Last of the Mohicans) 97
James Fenimore Cooper
If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, you can bet the water bill is higher.
Debbie Macomber
I thought that once I got to this city nothing could ever catch up with me because I could remake my life daily. Once that had made me feel infinite. Now I was certain I would never learn. Being remade was the same thing as being constantly undone.
Stephanie Danler
It's not enough to just do your best. You must continue to improve your best.
Kenneth Wayne Wood
Never misconceive that which is real
Kim Holden
The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation — a force for construction and destruction.
Jonathan Haidt
Perspective gets lost in moral certainties. Which only means that no one was ever burned at the stake by a doubter.
Thomas H. Cook
Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it.
Robin Hobb
Each positive thought is your refuge and your sanctuary, where in that thoughtful moment, you are safe.
Bryant McGill
Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another.
Mitch Albom
Being busy is different from taking action.
Keshni Kashyap
So a scientist and an engineer are tossed into separate rooms, stocked with tools and parts, and told that they aren't allowed out until they've produced a working prototype for a radio receiver. After two days, the scientist has covered the walls in scribbling and looks like a mad man, raving about how not only is it impossible to build a receiver with the parts given but that he's proven that radio is theoretically impossible anyway. When they check on the engineer, they find that he'd built the receiver in less than a day, fashioned a crude speaker and antenna, and had found a radio broadcast he liked and hadn't bothered to tell them he'd finished.
Joshua Dalzelle
I swearwe'd lose ourhearts ifthey weren'twith elasticand butterflypinclasped safelyin.
Todd Boss
In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise. From the frayed and slovenly petticoats of the woman who owns a poultry stand in the market and who has grown wealthy by selling chickens at twelve ounces to the pound, or the silk sweep of Mamie Tracy, whose diamonds have been stolen down on the avenue...
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Too long spent denying each other, we no longer hid our want.
Scarlett Dawn
From: Beth Fremont To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder Sent: Thurs, 09/30/1999 3:42 PM Subject: If you were Superman … … and you could choose any alter ego you wanted, why the hell would you choose to spend your Clark Kent hours — which already suck because you have to wear glasses and you can’t fly — at a newspaper? Why not pose as a wealthy playboy like Batman? Or the leader of a small but important nation like Black Panther? Why would you choose to spend your days on deadline, making crap money, dealing with terminally crabby editors?
Rainbow Rowell
Washington was no politician as we understand the word," replied Ratcliffe abruptly. "He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done today. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.
Henry Adams
For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.
Stephen King
devotion, admiration and trust. No words really needed for such feelings. As all creatures know of theseunique colors in the rainbow of Love....
Leland Lewis
Children arrive animists. They learn about life, themselves, and empathy by imagining the liveliness of everything they come into contact with.
S. Kelley Harrell
I was Juliet and Quinn was Romeo, and the lines weren't dead black-and-white words on a page but somehow alive, as natural and real as the argument we'd had about the spider and the fly. The rows of empty seats were gone, and we were in a candlelit ballrooom, wrapped in our own cocoon of words. But the playful banter of our words couldn't mask what we both knew--that after this, nothing would be the same .And then we got to the kissing part, which we'd only read through together and had never really rehearsed. But it didn't matter, because I was still Juliet and Quinn was still Romeo, his gray-green eyes fixed on mine. And when he bent to kiss me, it was Romeo's lips on Juliet's. Even so, Juliet was just as stunned as I would've been. When I said the last line, I was speaking for both of us. You kiss by the book.
Jennifer Sturman
Because I could not stop for Death,He kindly stopped for me;The carriage held but just ourselvesAnd Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,And I had put awayMy labour, and my leisure too,For his civility.We passed the school where children played,Their lessons scarcely done;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun.We paused before a house that seemedA swelling of the ground;The roof was scarcely visible,The cornice but a mound.Since then 'tis centuries; but eachFeels shorter than the dayI first surmised the horses' headsWere toward eternity.
Emily Dickinson
Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak. Probably so we can think twice.
Bill Watterson
If you ever want something badly, let it go. If it comes back to you, then its yours forever. If it doesnt, then it was never yours to begin with.
Jack Engelhard
She had set it on the Internet, its own peculiar echo chamber.
Sherry Turkle
What'd you think would happen when you died? That the prophecy would just be over and we'd all be like, oops, guess we got that one wrong?
H.M. Ward
If you manage to make it to some semblance of adulthood, just showing up turns out to be one of the kindest, most selfless things you can do for someone.
Tim Kreider
Anyone with an autobiography is almost definitely an evil piece of shit.
Brian K. Vaughan
By portraying war as an opportunity for virtuous acts, the politicians romanticize evil.
Sheldon Richman
-I'm your girlfriend?- "No." Alexei shakes his head, then pulls me to him again, holds me closer. "There's not a word in either of our language for what you are to me".
Ally Carter
There was a lot of pain in that kiss. There was so much hurt and so much fear in it. I felt tears rolling down the both of our faces. But, in that kiss, there was even more want. We both wanted to smother out that pain, to not have so many horrible things in the all too recent past, to just be normal, to do the types of things we were supposed to be dealing with besides death and disability.
Keary Taylor
Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. "Today it ends. I can't live in fear any longer. I've cursed this power. I've both enjoyed and misused it. And I've hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough.
Libba Bray
That “the Spirit Himself intercedes” indicates that it is actually God pleading, praying, and mourning through us.
Billy Graham
It hadn't escaped her notice that when she let him believe the worst of her, still he vowed to stand beside her and work toward forgiveness.
Elizabeth Camden
Growing up, I loved the tale of Peter Rabbit and also books on Pippi Longstocking. Pippi was a girl who had so much fun and was very daring. My sons loved all the Dr. Seuss books
Soraya Diase Coffelt
She'd be dead before the memories and pain were finally gone; she knew it, accepted it, and dealt with it.
Catherine Coulter