Quotes by American Authors - Page 585

Our love of being right is best understood as our fear of being wrong
Kathryn Schulz
You learn more from your mistakes and failures than from any degree of success. Success can only be grasped for a moment before it becomes a distant oasis not to be found again unless you thirst for the knowledge found in the well fed by your mistakes and failures.
Brian Michael Good
There is pride, too, though - pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That's how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.
Anthony Doerr
He was a dying man looking down on the surgeons trying to save him.
John Green
We spend so much of our time lost in thought, trying to label everything as isolated objects and events. Though we fail to realize that our thoughts are incapable of defining anything in its totality. We can think about a situation for as long as we want to, but our thoughts will never know the situation exactly as it exists.
Joseph P. Kauffman
Live in love to live in abundance.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
When I carried the world entire upon my shoulders, so much of me was painfully dedicated to "fixing" myself, till finally I invited Christ into my Life and discovered that I had never been "broken" at all. EVERYTHING I thought was lacking in myself He had long ago made Whole.
Raymond D. Longoria Jr.
The future is personal.
Bill Jensen
Didn't you ever have a father yourself? You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.' So I figured it's because I never had a father that I don't want one now. A person can't miss something she never had.
Rebecca Stead
No matter how worldly I became, there was always that one part of me that never forgot where I came from and how simple life was there.
Carlos Wallace
Everything okay?”“I’m not sure, but it’s not shittier, so that’s something.”She laughed. “Still an optimist.
Lisa Kessler
What you desire is what you want, what you have is what Allah wants.
Nouman Ali Khan
Happiness is a choice. It's not always easy, but is IS always worth it.
Lorri Faye
Though there had yet to be a victor in this great war that had begun almost three years ago, Maurice had written to her that they had, all of them, on all sides, lost their freedom. Freedom to think hopefully of the future.
Jacqueline Winspear
Why do we say razzle-dazzle instead of dazzle-razzle? Why super-duper, helter-skelter, harum-scarum, hocus-pocus, willy-nilly, hully-gully, roly-poly, holy moly, herky-jerky, walkie-talkie, namby-pamby, mumbo-jumbo, loosey-goosey, wing-ding, wham-bam, hobnob, razza-matazz, and rub-a-dub-dub? I thought you'd never ask. Consonants differ in "obstruency"—the degree to which they impede the flow of air, ranging from merely making it resonate, to forcing it noisily past an obstruction, to stopping it up altogether. The word beginning with the less obstruent consonant always comes before the word beginning with the more obstruent consonant. Why ask why?
Steven Pinker
The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don’t vote.
Andrew Vachss
As one widow put it to me, “Strength doesn’t mean being able to stand up to anything, but being able to crawl on your belly a long, long time before you can stand up again.
Mark Matousek
A hurt body and mind aren’t just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorship. There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion. That my mind had been as badly hurt as my body was a thing I only came to realize once I was alone and all other voices dropped away.
Stephen King
Memory is like that. It alters itself so that girlsare always trapped under the earth, waiting in the dark.
Catherynne M. Valente
She stared at him dully and said: “I don’t like crooks, and even if I did, I wouldn’t like crooks that are stool-pigeons, and if I liked crooks that are stool-pigeons, I still wouldn’t like you.” She turned to the outer door.
Dashiell Hammett
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul Bellow
It is easy to smile in the face of a challenge, when we believe in ourselves that we won't back down.
Ellen J. Barrier
Did you fail? Try, try again. There is no gain without pain.
Debasish Mridha
Rights and empowerment are interconnected: unless a substantial number of women in a community come to believe that they have rights and demand to exercise them, right remains an abstraction.
Mahnaz Afkhami
There will be times in your life when you will have to stand alone in your pain and choke back all the injustice done to you. Letting go will be the hardest thing you have ever had to do because it means losing something you wish you didn't have to lose--the person that you care for. However, to be authentic--one person, it requires standing for truth as you know it to be, instead of having your dignity destroyed by another. It is a fire you have to walk through, in order to truly live. Sometimes, practicing faith by letting go is the most painful chapter of your life that will take every bit of courage for you to close, before you can be reborn.
Shannon L. Alder
They praised his modesty and did not listen to him, for listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.
Ursula K Le Guin
The actual truth has never written about any war, and this will be no exception.
George Lynch
Did you know that wherever you find fool's gold, real gold exists somewhere nearby? This also goes for relationships and friendships. Real gold is found in the heart. For every piece of fake gold that you discard, remember that true gold isn't too far.
Suzy Kassem
A fierce hatred of embarrassment ruled a surprising amount of the life of Moses Malone, the Hall of Fame basketball center.
Joseph Bottum
Some things were better lost than found.
Stephen King
Ruth believes that boys are not found around stables because what they like is taking things apart and putting them together again, and for this purpose horses are not so satisfactory as cars, motorcycles, and even bicycles, while girls adore horses because they are biological and have functions.
Wallace Stegner
You think he left a big flashing arrow pointing to a filing cabinet labeled 'Evidence Here!'? He's a Stray, Ethan, not Wile E. Coyote!
Rachel Vincent
He leaned down to her ear and purred. Damn but she loved when he purred.
Shelly Laurenston
I remember as a child of eight being told by a young friend that I had killed Christ. That was news to me. It's a common experience for the Jewish young. Should later generations of Germans be burdened with the guilt arising from the profound inhumanity of their ancestors? Revenge may be sweet, but guilt is non-transferable. Still, hatreds survive with the persistence of cockroaches.
Sid Fleischman
I know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of the truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agonyof a lie is neverlost. That's a running sore
John Steinbeck
Though firm, we are never too firm, though we love fun, we never have fun in a silly way that makes us appear ridiculous, unless that is our intent.
George Saunders
Jesus knows the intentions of our hearts and what we do in secret.
Billy Graham
You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have.
Criss Jami
And except on a certain kind of winter evening—six-thirty in the Seventies, say, already dark and bitter with a wind off the river, when I would be walking very fast toward a bus and would look in the bright windows of brownstones and see cooks working in clean kitchens and and imagine women lighting candles on the floor above and beautiful children being bathed on the floor above that—except on nights like those, I never felt poor; I had the feeling that if I needed money I could always get it.
Joan Didion
What pillow can one have like a good conscience?
John Steinbeck
God is that force that drives us to really see each other and to really behold each other and care for each other and respond to each other. And for me, that is actually enough. That cultivating it, that thinking about it, worshipping it, working towards it, taking care of it, nurturing it in myself, nurturing it in other people, that really is a life’s work right there, and it doesn’t have to be any bigger than that. God doesn’t have to be out in the next solar system over bashing asteroids together. It’s plenty, just the God that I work with.” Kate Braestrup
Krista Tippett
It was before him again in its completeness -- the choice in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the freedom to act which never made for romance. The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become the roll of fame.
Edith Wharton
What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.
Pearl Bailey
I don't want to make people mad. I just... well, how can people get better if you don't tell them what you honestly think?
Brandon Sanderson
Justice is the state that exists when there is equity, balance, and harmony in relationships and in society. Injustice is the state that exists when unjust people do violence to peace and shalom and create inequity, imbalance, and dissonance.
Ken Wytsma
This time the fluttery feeling in my stomach was more intense. It made the inside of my thighs tingle and my breathing deepen.
P.C. Cast
Now the thought of forever makes me tired. Frightened. Sad. What is forever worth? When love is so fragile and even one human life so long?
Stacey Jay
Even the devils are theists. I am of all people one of the least qualified to judge, but I do believe that some atheists are closer to God than are some theists. With Him, it is better to be distant in the mind but near in the heart than it is to be distant in the heart but near in the mind.
Criss Jami
There is more that unites us than divides us. So make it a point to talk with someone who is different from you. You may find that you have more in common than you think
Johnny Corn
All that's required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
Richard Paul Evans
Fear is the glue that holds us together.
Nina G Jones
Only the gentle are ever really strong.
James Dean
As for what you're calling hard luck - well we made New England out of it. That and codfish.
Stephen Vincent Benét
With the persistence of data, there is, too, the persistence of people. If you friend someone as a ten-year-old, it takes positive action to unfriend that person. In principle, everyone wants to stay in touch with the people they grew up with but social networking makes the idea of "people from one's past" close to an anachronism. Corbin reaches for a way to express his discomfort. he says "For the first time, people will stay your friends. It makes it harder to let go of your life and move on." Sanjay, sixteen, who wonders if he will be "writing on my friends' walls when I'm a grown-up," sums up his misgivings: "For the first time people can stay in touch with people all of their lives. But it used to be good that people could leave their high school friends behind and take on new identities.
Sherry Turkle
We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.
Abraham Flexner
Grover Underwood of the satyrs!" Dionysus called.Grover came forward nervously."Oh, stop chewing your shirt," Dionysus chided. "Honestly, I'm not going to blast you. For your bravery and sacrifice, blah, blah, blah, and since we have an unfortunate vacancy, the gods have seen fit to name you a member of the Council of Cloven Elders."Grover collapsed on the spot."Oh, wonderful," Dionysus sighed, as several naiads came forward to help Grover. "Well, when he wakes up, someone tell him that he will no longer be an outcast, and that all satyrs, naiads, and other spirits of nature will henceforth treat him as a lord of the Wild, with all rights, privileges, and honors, blah, blah, blah. Now please, drag him off before he wakes up and starts groveling.""FOOOOOD," Grover moaned, as the nature spirits carried him away.I figured he'd be okay. He would wake up as a lord of the Wild with a bunch of beautiful naiads taking care of him. Life could be worse.
Rick Riordan
Someone needs to drag you kicking and screaming into this century.
Christine Feehan
I love you, he thought, because you are honest with me and because you are willing to speak the truth to me when others might seek to curry favor instead. I love you because you are in this bed with me, not trying to conceive the much-awaited next generation of Windhams, but just holding my hand.-- Gayle Windham
Grace Burrowes
Engaging spirits isn’t an elitist ability or industry, it’s being active in the connection with All Things. It’s innate to us all.
S. Kelley Harrell
Whatever is unlike Christ in conduct, speech, or disposition grieves the Spirit of grace.
Billy Graham