Quotes by American Authors - Page 533

I have heard many a young unmarried lady exclaim with a bold sweep of conception, “Ah me! I wish I were a widow!” Mrs. Keith was precisely the widow that young unmarried ladies wish to be. With her diamonds in her dressing-case and her carriage in her stable, and without a feather’s weight of encumbrance, she offered a finished example of satisfied ambition.
Henry James
The road of life is paved with daily successes, a great number of them penny and nickle triumphs. Sadly, these little feats are often seen as worthless―even failures―because we dream of greater gain. Our greed keeps us focused on a gleaming pot of gold waiting at the end of some elusive rainbow. And, despairing a big loss, we fail to see the value in small achievements.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I don't ever want to make the mistake of needing him as much as or more than he needs me. But there's no denying that sometimes, when we sleep together in the dark cavern of the bottom bunk, his big brother thrashing around on top, the white noise machine grinding out its fake rain, the green digital clock announcing every hour, Iggy's small body holds mine.
Maggie Nelson
If you have to use the words, “deep down” all that means is you're fooling yourself. You're seeing what you want to see and not what's really there.
Nyrae Dawn
Your handshake has the power to reveal your strength of character, make a promise, demonstrate your level of respect, exercise your etiquette, and represent your business acumen. Learning how to do it well will take you far in life and in business.
Susan C.Young
How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.
Sam Harris
Leaving us with Eric is like hiring a babysitter who spends his time sharpening knives.
Veronica Roth
To gain the spiritual ascendancy over ourselves, and the influences with which we are surrounded, through a rigid course of self-discipline, is our first consideration, it is our first labor, before we can pave the way for our children to grow up without sin unto salvation.
Brigham Young
Teachers are often rightly praised for all they do for our children. But there are others out there who are working to make the youth of today a happy and productive generation of tomorrow. And I'm proud to say I'm one of these "others" providing a positive environment for many wonderful children who are full of promise.
Jack Canfield
We owe our loyalty to each other and to our children's children, not to party politics.
DaShanne Stokes
We do not trust educated people and rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.
James Baldwin
I was at the annual meeting of a state library association a few years later, when the children were in the process of leaving the nest, and one of the librarians asked me, "What do you think you and Hugh have done which was the best for your children?"I answered immediately and without thinking, "We love each other.
Madeleine L'Engle
He stops in his tracks, face expressing major disappointment. "Wait - seriously? That's it? We don't get to do a stealthy tiptoe as we slip around back? No sneaking through a cracked window, or arguing over who gets to crawl through the dogie door to let the other one in?
Alyson Noel
It’s not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys, it’s homophobia. It’s not the color of their skin that makes life harder for people of color; it’s racism. It’s not having vaginas that makes life harder for women, it’s sexism. And it’s ageism, far more than the passage of time, that makes growing older harder for all of us.
Ashton Applewhite
When I was very young, before I could read, I remember being very interested in comic books.
Nathan Fillion
She pushed his massive chest, which was as effective as if she pushed granite. "What are you made of, bloody stone?"tHe chuckled, eyes full of mirth. "Sometimes.
Lisa Carlisle
You see demons in the eyes of the world, and the world sees bottomless pit in yours.
Neal Shusterman
Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of.
Jason Mraz
It's Saturday; a day off, or it's not; maybe it's a day off connected to countless days off. Some are secure, some not, some wonder. But there's a common thread; each of us having purpose; some living after learning it, some learning while living it, some looking. We are all connected in purpose, all of us loved equally by a race and gender-blind Christ walking with us in that purpose.
Lee Goff
Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others.
Jeffrey Tayler
The problem with romance is the occlusion. The tunnel vision, drawing your every gaze downstream, into those other eyes, the flotsam of your better self, your clearer self, along for the ride. It doesn't matter what secrets swirl and bob in the waters beneath you, as you float toward that lady at Delphi, who, you imagined, reading Mythology, must have been beautiful. It doesn't matter that Charybdis, with no body, with no form, with only a mouth-as-being, couldn't have been evil, because she lacked the brain for it. It doesn't matter that following the logical course of events, the natural course, always disadvantages someone else, because love, after all, is simply a competition for resources, made infinitely complex and unknowable when squared and cubed and raised to every other emotional exponent - and then layered with sex and society and a bad memory for what those resources were in the first place.
Darin Bradley
Make peace with silence, and remind yourself that it is in this space that you'll come to remember your spirit. When you're able to transcend an aversion to silence, you'll also transcend many other miseries. And it is in this silence that the remembrance of God will be activated.
Wayne W. Dyer
Oh, I'm not saying that alcohol is perfect. It has caused its share of problems. Russia is only one example.
Dave Barry
I landed on my side, my hip taking the brunt of the fall. It burned and stung from the hit, but I ignored it and struggled to sit up quickly. There really was no point in hurrying so no one would
Cambria Hebert
I'm supposed to be a man but I can't help thinking no one ever showed me what that is supposed to look like. Maybe that is why I ride the middle all the time—never offending anyone, never getting a hard time, but never much standing out either.
Heather Duffy Stone
Never be afraid to take a moment to think.
Kendall F. Person
To make the fastest progress,Be an absolutely cheerfulHero-warriorAnd take both victory and failureAs parallel experience riversLeading to the sea Of progress-delight.
Sri Chinmoy
The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?
Elizabeth Gilbert
9 likes Like Facebook_icon“Read this to yourself. Read it silently.Don't move your lips. Don't make a sound. Listen to yourself. Listen without hearing anything.What a wonderfully weird thing, huh? NOW MAKE THIS PART LOUD! SCREAM IT IN YOUR MIND! DROWN EVERYTHING OUT.Now, hear a whisper. A tiny whisper. Now, read this next line in your best crotchety- old man voice:"Hello there, sonny. Does your town have a post office?"Awesome! Who was that? Whose voice was that? It sure wasn't yours! How do you do that?How?! It must've been magic.
Bo Burnham
The biggest battles you face in love are the battle to know your worth and the battle to know when your boundaries need to be protected.
Shannon L. Alder
How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past?
N K Jemisin
You hid in my ink and guided my hand. You stained the pages with your silence as God wrote the words, "Be still." Yet, my heart's blindness could only write in loud hues of red, "I love you.
Shannon L. Alder
The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.
Aaron Lauritsen
I would much rather have a life filled with magic than one filled with the mundane.
Debbie Viguié
Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.
Don Roff
The truth is, it's really only okay to be yourself if that self is within an accepted range of 'normal'.
Stacey Kade
In another 2,400 years, even Socrates, the most well-known genius of the century, might be forgotten. The future will erase everything--there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible.
John Green
I had only four hairs worth shaving, but I managed to inflict five cuts attempting to remove them.
Troy Soos
Learn to trust yourself and you will create a meaningful life.
Lynn A. Robinson
A high-pitched sound, like steam escaping from a kettle whistles through the dark room. But nobody’s making tea. We both turn toward the source of the eerie noise.A weak stream of unearthly light seeps through the window near the corner of the room and pours onto the floor. Its consistency seems to lie somewhere between a liquid and a solid, like mercury, only blue. Out of the gleaming, wobbly puddle, a phosphorescent vapor rises up. The ghost we thought was Daniel materializes and looms over us for two seconds before he lunges and wraps his hands around Wyatt’s neck.
Alyson Larrabee
Sometimes in life, we need to be pushed to conquer our fears, challenge our nightmares, realized our dreams and achieved our goals, in order to be the best we can be. - CG Murphy
Courtney Murphy
Living the life I wanted was my ultimate responsibility. Learning to forgive was my ultimate act of self-love.
andrea T Goeglein
You won’t fail! That’s the fear in you lying to you. You will succeed! That’s why fear is trying so hard to stop you. I encourage you to take that first step. Walk into your purpose and do what you were born to do. Have faith in yourself. Have courage to move forward doubting NOTHING. Doubt has no place and serves no purpose. Give yourself a chance to uncover all of the greatness that’s within you!
Stephanie Lahart
The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many.
Mark Z. Danielewski
Any way I slice reality it comes out poorly, and I feel an urge to not exist, something I have never felt before; and now here it comes with conviction, almost panic. I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.
Suzanne Finnamore
Asher," she begged.His lips brushed her ear before he nipped the lobe. "I have a fever. It's for you, a ghràidh.""You make me burn.""Then we'll burn together.
Donna Grant
There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.
Theodore Roosevelt
Like hot foodI love youlike warmbread & coldcuts, buttersammichesor, days later, afterThanksgivingwhen I wantwhatever's left
Kevin Young
I am always saddened by the death of a good person. It is from this sadness that a feeling of gratitude emerges. I feel honored to have known them and blessed that their passing serves as a reminder to me that my time on this beautiful earth is limited and that I should seize the opportunity I have to forgive, share, explore, and love. I can think of no greater way to honor the deceased than to live this way.
Steve Maraboli
Lord of the Muck.
Ottilie Weber
When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.
Theodore Roosevelt
Reading...is a full-contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources.
Thomas C. Foster
She's the kind of girl who brings you to the moon without you even being aware. The kind of girl you trip in love with, The kind of girl you never forget.
Melody Lee
The Colonel led all the cheers.Cornbread!" he screamed.CHICKEN!" the crowd responded.Rice!"PEAS!"And then, all together: "WE GOT HIGHER SATs."Hip Hip Hip Hooray!" the Colonel cried.YOU'LL BE WORKIN' FOR US SOMEDAY!
John Green
Daniel Elkins. The man credited with hunting vampires to extinction, killed by vampires. Ironic way to go, but he wouldn't have it any other way. He told me on more than one occasion that he knew he'd go down bloody, and he was right.
David Reed
The leaders of thought and of action grope theirway forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly,that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of valueonly as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes fromdevotion to loftier ideals.
Theodore Roosevelt
The sweetest smiles hold the darkest secrets...
Sara Shepard
Nobody can steal my inner beauty, tranquility, and peace without my consent.
Debasish Mridha
A child’s bond to her mother cannot be understated, and my bond with Helen was a ragged, baffling, disheartening, chaotic mess. I felt crazy, often, around my own mother. I grew up questioning what was normal, asking what reality was and wasn’t, and not trusting the outcome of different situations. She scared me and I couldn’t predict her behavior, so I was often off-kilter and worried.
Cathy Lamb
High altitude astronomy is a strange world of oxygen starvation, sleep deprivation and radiation sickness.
Steven Magee