Quotes by American Authors - Page 532

Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognition of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.
Frans de Waal
I wanted to fix things, obviously. You know it’s like… the planets are out of alignment when we’re fighting.
Siera Maley
It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying.
Ron Suskind
The mechanic, when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and asking the assistance of some divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows that something is too large or too small; that there is something wrong with his machine; and he goes to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, until the wheel will turn.
Robert G. Ingersoll
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
You will not really know where you stand until you have been tested.
Sandra M. Michelle
My father and I used to watch a ton of old horror movies when I was growing up. ’The Creature from the Black Lagoon‘ was one of my father’s favorites and he was very excited for me to see the film. But after the movie was over, I told him that I was kind of bored. I said to him, ‘I’m sorry, Daddy, but I saw the zipper in the back of the monster’s costume. From that point on, I was really never scared at all. The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t believe someone intentionally tipped off the target. And I maintain that no one made some horrendous mistake, which I’m now trying to cover up. I believe what really happened with the operation was that our target ended up seeing the zipper. Orlo Kharms realized something around him wasn’t… real. And he was able to avoid the trap we had laid out for him.
Richard Finney
You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.
Chuck Palahniuk
Withhold a smile only when the smile can hurt someone. Otherwise, let it bloom forth in a riot.
Vera Nazarian
Some people take offense like it's a limited time offer.
Tim Fargo
I won't argue with you, but still it's secretly turning me into a hateful person. I figure that the best revenge, though, is to leave people to their own devices, and they will make their own lives hell.
Dee Dee Ramone
If you risk nothing then you risk everything.
Geena Davis
Thank you.It used to be knee length, but then I discovered that when I get angry I like to cut things.I'm not allowed to have scissors any more.It's still pretty lengthy, but I've been threatening to shave half of it for the past week and nobody seems to believe me...I do it all myself though because I scream when I'm touched and that scares people.
Emilie Autumn
At his "World of Physics" Web site, Eric W. Weisstein notes that the fine structure constant continues to fascinate numerologists, who have claimed that connections exist between alpha, the Cheops pyramid, and Stonehenge!
Clifford A. Pickover
We don’t really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples—almost a third, as it turns out—engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge?
Bessel A. van der Kolk
In today's society, Christians have a bad rap for things like holding picketing signs, screaming mantras of hate, and bombing abortion clinics. Somehow, I don't think that's showing love.
Anna M. Aquino
In a natural environment, nature controls the breeding cycles. In the man-made environment, abnormal environmental conditions control the unnatural breeding cycles.
Steven Magee
While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Eugene V. Debs
First organizing it on paper isn't just academic, it's an applied prerequisite for manifestation.
T.F. Hodge
For years to come the debris of a convulsed world will beset our steps. It will require a purpose stronger than any man and worthy of all men to calm and inspirit us. A sane society whose riches are happy children, men and women, beautiful with peace and creative activity, is not going to be ordained for us. We must make it ourselves.
Helen Keller
You have family, only a brother you clearly don't like to speak about. Fine. That's all right." She ran her fingers through her hair. "But don't ever say dreams are a waste. It's a miracle I can still speak of dreams and futures after all I've been through. There's love in this world, Thristan, love that can encompass the heart abiding in humans' mortal, fragile bodies. And there are stupid little humans like me, dreamers, who believe one day they'll find it.
Madison Thorne Grey
Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?
Stephen King
We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.
Derrick A. Bell
I must acknowledge that though his adoption embodies graciousness, it is also a reminder this world is not as it should be. Brokenness permeates our world. Sure, beauty is born from ashes, but the ashes don't just magically disappear. Suffering and all that is wrong in this world still exists. This side of heaven, tragedy remains and the moments of her son becoming ours is a representation of joy and suffering deeply intertwined. Our son, the living proof and blessing that love is what makes a family, reminds us that adoption is born out of undeniable loss. Irrevocable loss of wholeness, of what was meant to be.To only acknowledge the beauty without giving voice to the tragedy, is to detract from adoption. In diminishing the tragedy of adoption, I decrease my son's story, along with others a part of the adoption circle. I would be choosing to ignore a massive portion of who he is.
Natalie Brenner
It ain't bragging if you've done it. There's nothing wrong with being proud of doing something well. In fact, if you intend to do something creative for a living, it's absolutely essential.[check for wording] Proper pride says, "I'm good at this." Improper pride says, "I'm better than you.
James A. Owen
Sing through your grief. Don't let your thoughts weigh you down.
Marty Rubin
Grace is giving yourself a free pass and realizing that it isn't free at all.
Erin Loechner
On our own, we’d look totally normal. Together, we’re something else. Together, we’re special.
Corey Ann Haydu
Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara.O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac
Frank O'Hara
The best baby-sitters, of course, are the baby’s grandparents. You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida.
Dave Barry
It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.
Elizabeth Kostova
And anyway, once you allowed yourself to picture such a scenario, it couldn't happen. That was just the way life went.
J. Courtney Sullivan
Day gazed out at the sky, where a shooting star was winging across the heavens. "I stepped in between Jenna and the hex. I wasn't even thinking; it was just instinctive."t"Of course it was." Barbara gazed at him fondly. "You may think you have changed, but your gallantry was never just for show; it's part of who you are.
Deborah Blake
Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.
Sabaa Tahir
I don't fear death--I fear dying before I've read Dickens end to end.
Amy Smith
Parents are not alone in focusing their expectations on success at the graduation exam: The whole education system colludes with them. The curriculum and organization of schools often date back to a colonial past, when schools were meant to train a local elite to be the effective allies of the colonial state, and the goal was to maximize the distance between them and the rest of the populace.
Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo
If you want to know how old a woman is . . . ask her sister-in-law.
Edgar Howe
Yeah, cause that would be a smart choice. So, I should just forget about the whole lying to me thing when you pronounce you will never do it again?” “Yes.” “You’d have a better chance getting a donkey to shit gold.
Elizabeth J. Kolodziej
She leaned a shoulder against the tunnel wall and thought of Kellan. A Dragon King. A dragon and a King.A gorgeous man who kissed as if there were no tomorrow and made love skillfully, adeptly. He could have let her die. Instead, he took her on a journey that opened her eyes to an entirely new world both beautiful and frightening.
Donna Grant
If you weren't scared,you wouldn't be human,you wouldn't be brave.What do you mean? I ask.If you were fearless,you wouldn'tneed to overcome it.Bravery means being scaredand going forwardanyway, Fia says.That's courage
Leza Lowitz
Homeschool history tells of more than two centuries of home-teaching influence on American education, although it has been largely obscured by the drawn curtains of conventional bias.
Raymond S. Moore
Everyone should strive to be a world citizen. Boundaries were created by man, not the Creator. There is no such thing as THEM vs. US. There is only 'WE'.
Suzy Kassem
People—especially men—don't always know what they want. You try, and if it doesn't work, then you may qui
Cherise Sinclair
It’s happened before. It’s all happened before. History is worth shit.
Larry Kramer
When she loves, she loves with her whole heart, giving herself completely, holding nothing back.
Faith Sullivan
Any education that doesn't allow you to think freely is not an education but a prison.
Debasish Mridha
People don't want to listen to their thoughts, so they fill the world with noise.
Erin Entrada Kelly
You have been blessed with immeasurable power to make positive changes in your life.
Steve Maraboli
The job wouldn't be just put the summer, but for a long time, as long as she could see ahead. Once they were used to the money coming in it would be impossible to do without again.
Carson McCullers
Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.
Paul Goodman
At its most elemental, a spell is no more than a recipe for change.
Gregory Maguire
By creating an image of low self- esteem within ourselves, we bomb and terrorize our true self. When we refuse to forgive, we create an insensible war from old grudges. When we allow stress to impede our healthy flow of energy, we create the weapon of destruction that kills humanity.
Forrest Curran
A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Just because a path never existed, doesn't mean that it isn't there...
Lionel Suggs
Through photography and image I have been afforded the privilege of sharing the stories and myths of people's lives with others. The process for me became self-revelatory. It was a process of soul-making, something all humans are engaged in, no matter their endeavor. I saw a part of myself in each person I photographed. I came to realize, through the alchemical process of living, that each life is important, no matter how little that life seems to offer.
J. Don Cook
Have the wisdom to perceive all there is to be thankful for, and then be thankful for the wisdom to perceive things so clearly.
Richelle E. Goodrich
By seeing the beauty of life, I attract them into my life.
Debasish Mridha
That one smooth black eye stared, and reflected in it I fancied I could see the cyclopeon city, and the endless column of the marching dead.
Stephen King
There were so many things a tree could do: add color, provide shade, drop fruit, or become a children's playground, a whole sky universe to climb and hang from; an architecture of food and pleasure, that was a tree.
Ray Bradbury
When your intentions are pure, so too will be your success.
Charles F. Glassman