Quotes by American Authors - Page 971

The most consistent thing about Graham Wessit was his attitude of open experiment. Can you even imagine , she asked herself, plain, quiet, intellectual little you spending a lifetime on the arm of such a havoc-producing man?
Judith Ivory
Asking permission to call someone by their first name is a gesture of gentility and consideration. And once permission is granted, the gate is open for mutual respect and mutual purpose. Simply demonstrating this courtesy before making an assumption is impressive. Once permission is granted, you have earned points on both sides.
Susan C.Young
The DFA and organizations like it have pushed and squeezed and elbowed out all the feeling in the world. They have clamped their fists around a geyser to keep it from exploding.But the pressure eventually builds, and the explosion will always come.
Lauren Oliver
My brother-in-law had to give up his last job because of illness. His boss became sick of him.
Henny Youngman
Live with grace and dignity. It's a middle finger to the darkness
Jamie Tworkowski
The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer a river, and the desert was no longer a desert. Nothing was as it had been. He knew what had happened to the sagelands. He himself had helped burn them. Then men like his father had seized the river without a trace of evil in their hearts, sure of themselves but ignorant, and children of their time entirely, with no other bearings to rely on. Irrigators and fruit-tree growers, they believed the river to be theirs. His own life spanned that time and this, and so he believed in the old fast river as much as he believed in apple orchards, and yet he saw that the two were at odds, the river defeated that apples might grow as far as Royal Slope. It made no more sense to love the river and at the same time kill it growing apples than it made sense to love small birds on the wing and shoot them over pointing dogs. But he'd come into the world in another time, a time immune to these contradictions and in the end he couldn't shake old ways any more than he could shake his name.
David Guterson
An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm. I ran.
Lauren Oliver
Colonel Cathcart is our commanding officer and we must obey him. Why don't you fly four more missions and see what happens?""I don't want to.""Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs?" Major Major said. "That way you can fly the four missions and not run any risks.""I don't want to fly milk runs. I don't want to be in the war anymore.""Would you like to see our country lose?" Major Major asked."We won't lose. We've got more men, more money, and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.""But suppose everybody on our side felt that way?""Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?
Joseph Heller
Success is state of mind.If you want success start thinking of yourself as a success
Joyce Brothers
Why settle for anything less than total life fulfillment. Start by filling yourself up with you!
Diana Dentinger
Government is nothing more than the combined force of society or the united power of the multitude for the peace, order, safety, good, and happiness of the people... There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all the others by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike... The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation it is impossible they should be enslaved. Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable... There is a danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living wth power to endanger public liberty.
David McCullough
It is a challenge to love someone who does not see the divine as you do, and much harder still to date someone who considers your spirituality a design flaw in an otherwise worthwhile human being.
Thomm Quackenbush
The best way to get through any challenge is to step back, look up at the sky, breathe deeply in and out, smile if you have to…then dive in.
Waylon H. Lewis
The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race--which is not one race but many, with a million desires and hopes and wished for ourselves and our children?
Colson Whitehead
But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.
Howard Zinn
It's funny how you can know a person, think of him as your closest friend, and still never gain access to the secret chambers in his heart.
Jennifer Finney Boylan
For any reputable person or organization to be successful, that person's or organization's actions must be based on solid information, not conspiracy theories, not hearsay, not rumors, and certainly not fear mongering.
Mike Klepper
Few men realize how much of their lives are lived in pursuit of the values our culture has traditionally associated with masculinity. These values – a primary focus on work, logical thinking and always being in emotional control – have many benefits to men and their families. When taken to extremes, the pursuit of traditional masculine values becomes a cage for feelings, a stranglehold on life itself.
Mary Crocker Cook
A person imbued with compassion and self-understanding can readily love oneself and exhibit endless sympathy for all people. A person who is unkind to their self can never transcend their corrupt barriers much less run into the world with open arms enthusiastically embracing humankind and all of nature with uninhibited friendliness and goodwill.
Kilroy J. Oldster
You won't find your dream until you lose your excuses.
Orrin Woodward
It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species.
John Steinbeck
I can trust my friends. ... These people force me to examine myself encourage me to grow.
Cher
He wasn’t dealing with underage girls or porn, just spreading the word of jihad to young, impressionable people, which, unfortunately, was not a crime.
Kenneth Eade
You do not need to be a mountain to feel strong. Be like a little flexible stream to have true power.
Debasish Mridha
The amount of time we give to something indicates it's importance to us.
Jim George
I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue?
Robert A. Heinlein
When a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn't know this yet, but he senses it deep down in his core. So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.
Celeste Ng
The two things he most valued, which is to say liberty and equality, were not natural allies.
Christopher Hitchens
Instead of manipulating [people] for our own purposes, we’d help them achieve what is best for them. We’d also try to see life through their eyes. Treat others the way you would want them to treat you.
Billy Graham
Everyone dies alone, Eragon. Whether you are a king on a battlefield or a lowly peasant lying in bed among your family, no one can accompany you into the void.
Christopher Paolini
Our atheist thoughts go out to his family following their loss.
Brian Spellman
No man will ever be whole and dignified and free except in the knowledge that the men around him are whole and dignified and free, and that the world itself is free of contempt and misuse.
Wendell Berry
Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
John Steinbeck
Kindness is seen as weakness and intelligence worshiped, even when that intelligence allows unfathomable injustice and suffering to occur under its smart watch.
Bryant McGill
Everyone can understand music which is the universal language of love and kindness.
Debasish Mridha
Change is actually what you need to avoid.Assimilation is much more joyful than conformity,when you try to change you try to fit yourself to other people's standards.You deny your own values and opinions, and you adopt a personality that isn't you.And most likely you will be more uncomfortable even though it may seem like you fit in more, i would suggest you not to change. Just be yourself, the way you are.Because that's what makes you different and distinguishable and unique from every other individual.
Marilyn Monroe
He who seeks beauty will find it.
Bill Cunningham
If someone tries to follow the narrow way and does not set aside who they think they are and what they think they need, they cannot follow.
Ted Dekker
I’m glad your self-righteousness has given you some exercise, but you forget: we are not such a tidy, reasonable, and humane race. Our thoughts don’t stand in grammatical rows, our hearts don’t draw equations, our consciences don’t have the benefit of historians whispering the answers to us.
Josiah Bancroft
Experience is the catalyst for all great stories.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I would surmise that we must cherish the resources that God has given us to achieve a goal more than we cherish the goal itself. For if we fall victim to the pursuit of the goal alone, then the goal has suddenly become our god.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
[T]he radical geographer Iain Boal had prophesied, "The longing for a better world will need to arise at the imagined meeting place of many movements of resistance, as many as there are sites of closure and exclusion. The resistance will be as transnational capitalism.
Rebecca Solnit
Many are called, few are chosen.
Paul Hoffman
I loved Monty Python for the wordplay--this sense that you didn’t have to squash your intelligence to be funny. In fact, you could walk right into your intelligence and nerdiness and self-doubt, and that could be funny.
George Saunders
I believe that many sacrifices need to be made in order to do your best as a parent, but I also believe you don't have to abandon your whole life.
Holly Madison
You cannot control the results, only your actions.
Allan Lokos
Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God's great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it.
Richard J. Foster
...marriage is about becoming a team. You're going to spend the rest of your life learning about each other, and every now and then, things blow up. But the beauty of marriage is that if you picked the right person and you both love each other, you'll always figure out a way to get through it
Nicholas Sparks
You can be as good as Rembrandt, but if no one discovers you, you will only be a genius in theory.
Eric Weiner
i didn't call myself a writer until everyone else did. i knew it was real then.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Riding a Dragon is amazing, exhilarating, and murder on the thighs.
Bryan Fields
Listen to me, Ember. I couldn’t hurt you. I can’t.” Hayden settled his eyes on me. They were softer than I’d ever seen. “I love you— I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
Write a complaint letter. Then answer it.
Karen Salmansohn
Hadn’t retired reporter Stan warned him of how protective Cosimo was of his granddaughters? What if the Carusos had discovered his identity and wanted to rub him out as they’d rubbed out his father?Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now andat the hour of our death.
Christie Ridgway
So...you really feel a difference from drinking it?" Lad asked. I nodded. He nearly jumped out of the chair and charged past me to the kitchen. I followed him. "What are you doing?" "Getting you a refill.
Amy Patrick
You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it and that is the grave.
Henry Ward Beecher
This beach I voyage on leads me through the earth's immortal consistencies. Each form I encounter obeys the principles of perfection and trial, a timelessness in the making. The proportions of truth are at hand. Existence is celebrated in a splinter of driftwood, worn by wind-driven sand into the shape of an arrow. The onshore waves jostle each other, busy with their eternal changing, mixing crab shells, sand grains, and fish bones together. The trim little shorebirds feeding at the water's edge are acutely aware of one another, under the light and shadow leaning and drifting over all awareness. Wither own mysteries behind their beady eyes, their quick, advantageous movements, they follow the great, unifying sea." ~ John Hay. Bird of Light.
John Hay
There was an edge to his expression, like he didn't trust anyone who was more attractive than he was.
Marissa Meyer
I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living—they've been making a living for 2,000 years—preaching that we're in the last days.
Charles M. Schulz
I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.
Dorothy Allison