Quotes by American Authors - Page 72

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker.
Carl Sandburg
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.[Lincoln's maxim and philosophy]
Abraham Lincoln
Just because ANYONE CAN, DOESN'T MEAN EVERYONE CAN.
Chris Colfer
The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes;It is always the same, wherever one goes.And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people saythat they do not like fighting, will often displayEvery symptom of wanting to join in the fray.And theyBark bark bark bark bark barkUntil you can hear them all over the park.
T.S Eliot
Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.
Wallace Stevens
Art is communication.
Madeleine L'Engle
If these laws [in the Bible] belonged to any other ancient culture we would approach them very differently. We need not bother to reject the code of Hammurabi. Presumably it is because Moses is still felt to make some claim on us that this project of discrediting his law is persisted in with such energy. The unscholarly character of the project may derive from the supposed familiarity of the subject.
Marilynne Robinson
Whether you attribute it to some mysterious triple package or to your own Horatio Alger story, to succeed in America is, somehow, to be complicit with the idea of America—which means that at some level you’ve made peace with its rather ugly past.
Vijay Iyer
Face it," Gary told her kindly. "You'll never catch up. You just do as much as you can and take the punishments without saying anything. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't what they're really trying to teach us--to take plenty and keep our mouths shut.
Tamora Pierce
In the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent
Ambrose Bierce
Some things never changed.
Hope Ann
We are in the middle of what looks increasingly like the zombie apocalypse. Moaning people don't need help. Moaning people are intending to eat us.
Mira Grant
I shudder at the thought of men....I'm due to fall in love again
Dorothy Parker
But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?
David Foster Wallace
Don't get so lost in their words. Pay attention to their actions
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Their faces were inches apart now, and he traced her lips with one finger, lightly, lightly, then placed his lips there as if he’d drawn them into being.
Julie Anne Long
Be the patience you seek
Bryant McGill
There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.
Philip K Dick
Daemon laughed "I'm only at the service of one person in particular"My cheeks flamed as I scooted my chair over. "You are not servicing me in any way."He leaned in, closing my newly gained distance. "Not yet.""Oh, come on, Daemon I'm right here." Dee frowned. "You're about to make me lose my appetite.""Like that will ever happen." Lisa retorted with an eye roll.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
By changing how you perceive things and how you act upon those perceptions, you will change your life.
Chris Prentiss
Most of our suffering comes from resisting what is already here, particularly our feelings. All any feeling wants is to be welcomed, touched, allowed. It wants attention. It wants kindness. If you treated your feelings with as much love as you treated your dog or your cat or your child, you'd feel as if you were living in heaven every day of your sweet life.
Geneen Roth
Whatever. I just won’t have Elena hurt, is all. Or the little red-headed witch.” “Ah, yes, sweet Bonnie. I wouldn’t mind one or two like her. One for Samhain and one for the Solstice.”Damon snorted drowsily. “There aren’t two like her; I don’t care where you look. I won’t have her hurt either.
L.J. Smith
What you must realize, what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is going to become apparent to you once and for all. The most blinding illumination that strikes and perhaps radically changes your life will be so attenuated and obscured by doubts and dailiness that you may one day come to suspect the truth of that moment at all. The calling that seemed so clear will be lost in echoes of questionings and indecision; the church that seemed to save you will fester with egos, complacencies, banalities; the deepest love of your life will work itself like a thorn in your heart until all you can think of is plucking it out. Wisdom is accepting the truth of this. Courage is persisting with life in spite of it. And faith is finding yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, in the very heart of who you are, moved to praise it.
Christian Wiman
All love on this earth involves choice. When, for example, a young man expresses his love to a young woman and asks her to become his wife, he is not just making an affirmation of love; he is also negating his love for anyone else. In that one act by which he chooses her, he rejects all that is not her. There is no other real way in which to prove we love a thing than by choosing it in preference to something else. Word and signs of love may be, and often are, expressions of egotism or passion; but deeds are proofs of love. We can prove we love our Lord only by choosing Him in preference to anything else.
Fulton J. Sheen
Don't look for society to give you permission to be yourself.
Steve Maraboli
You tried to play the game, okay? But they run the game. You don't run anything. That means you can't change anything. Not from the inside. When you got nothing, you got to change things from the outside.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.
Pat Monahan
We all have 100% to deal with in our lives: 10% is important 90% unimportant. The secret to a happy productive life is to deal with the 10% and let the 90% slip.
Salli Rasberry
Like a lot of people, I’ve always enjoyed commenting on strangers’ outfits. Unlike a lot of people, I now had a new megaphone to do it with. And, let me tell you, commenting on people’s hilarious clothing choices through a megaphone makes it so much better.
Demetri Martin
Ain't we all been hurt by slavery?
Ernest J. Gaines
You're talking about the whole 'completing each other' thing, and I hate that. It's such Hollywood bullshit. We don't complete each other - no two people do. We just highlight what's missing. We're just two incomplete people.
Stephen Emond
It is said culture requires slaves. I say that no cultured society can be built with slaves. This terrible Twentieth Century has made all cultural theories from Plato down seem ridiculous. Little man, there has never been a human culture.
Wilhelm Reich
You will suffer, son of Hades!’ What else is new? Nico thought.
Rick Riordan
There is shadow under this red rock // (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) // And I will show you something different from either // Your shadow at morning striding behind you // Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you // I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S Eliot
It is possible for the human spirit to win after all.
Jack Kerouac
He held her and rocked her, believing, rightly or wrongly, that Ellie wept for the very intractability of death, its imperviousness to argument or to a little girl’s tears; that she wept over its cruel unpredictability; and that she wept because of the human being’s wonderful, deadly ability to translate symbols into conclusions that were either fine and noble or blackly terrifying. If all those animals had died and been buried, then Church could diet(any time!)tand be buried; and if that could happen to Church, it could happen to her mother, her father, her baby brother. To herself. Death was a vague idea; the Pet Sematary was real. In the texture of those rude markers were truths which even a child’s hands could feel.
Stephen King
Mortimer had maxed three credit cards stocking the cave with canned goods and medical supplies and tools and everything a man needed to live through the end of the world. There were more than a thousand books along shelves in the driest part of the cave. There used to be several boxes of pornography until Mortimer realized that he'd spent nearly ten days in a row sitting in the cave masturbating. He burned the dirty magazines to keep from doing some terrible whacking injury to himself.
Victor Gischler
I don't know why we stopped reading together, but gradually we were not doing it regularly, and then without realizing it was happening we were reading different books, and gradually we came not to care about the book the other one was reading, because it was not the book we were reading, and we became bored and drifted off when the other one talked about his book. What we were doing, reading different books, was furnishing different rooms, constructing separate worlds almost, in which we could sit and be ourselves again. Of course those were rooms in which we each sat alone, and we gradually spent more and more time in them and less and less in the house we lived in together.
Sam Savage
Tell me to leave," he said roughly."No," I whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to his jawline."Then I'm staying," and his lips consumed mine.
Alexa Rae
Some things are worth believing in. That the little guy can make it. Every single life has value and is worth living. That honor and integrity do matter. That justice will prevail – if not in this life – then the next, and that God does exist. And what we do in our lives matters.
Glenn Beck
She lifted her chin and glared at him. “If you had but asked, I would’ve informed you that I do not attend masquerades.” “That is precisely why I didn’t ask.
Erica Ridley
The apologist is most entrusted with apologetics when capable of arguing his opponent's position better than his opponent.
Criss Jami
Some days are hard on us. Life gets serious and shit sucks. But you're my favorite distraction, attraction and human being. And, I can't wait to love you more tomorrow.
Crystal Woods
He had always had a gift for conjuring images in his mind's eye. It was one of the secrets of his military success.
H.W. Brands
You know what it feels like when you are out of alignment ~ physically, spiritually, emotionally, or mentally. It wears you down, stresses you out, and negatively impacts your health and well-being. Life becomes more of a struggle, tasks seem harder to achieve, and relationships take more effort. Once you identify what may be causing misalignment, take deliberate steps to close the gaps, realign your attitude and actions to feel dynamic and balanced again.
Susan C.Young
I’m busy, you’re busy, everybody’s busy. I’ve got a lot I want to say to you, though.” “All right,” Pia told her. “Hit me with it.” “First, I’m so sorry about what my uncle Urien did to you guys. I hate him, he killed my family, and we’re going to cut off his head, and then I have to be Queen, but before that happens let’s do lunch, okay?
Thea Harrison
We want a fresh start only because we didn’t sufficiently care for the last fresh start.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
When God knows you're ready for the responsibility of commitment, He'll reveal the right person under the right circumstances.
Joshua Harris
There is a kidney-shaped fish pool outside the picture window. I cleaned it out and put in some large goldfish I bought in a bait store. The cats are always trying to catch the fish, with no success. One time the white cat leapt for a frog across the pool. The frog dove in and the cat fell in. He is trouble-prone.
William S Burroughs
Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
Malcolm X
There are no free lunches in philosophy any more than in real life.
Jaegwon Kim
Her complexity is a glorious fire that consumes, while her simplicity goes unapproachable. But if one takes time to understand her, there is something beautiful to find, something simple to be loved. But she goes unloved, for being misunderstood.
Anthony Liccione
I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy geography natural history and naval architecture navigation commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting poetry music architecture statuary tapestry and porcelain.
John Adams
When you have no real power, go public—really public. The public is where the real power is.
Elizabeth Warren
Writing is my pleasure and the play,where I find myself again and again.
Debasish Mridha
She represents the country Alamonia.
David Letterman
Sqwaak!" from Fletcher, the environmental crime fighting parrot in The Big Belch graphic novel by Kay Wood.
Kay Wood
Perhaps the rest of the world was gone. It was the most plausible answer. Heaven knows she couldn’t see or think of anyone else. That must be the answer, they were the only two people left, as the Earth spun into a timeless abyss. Claire once read time doesn’t pass at normal speeds within a black hole. If one were to travel into a black hole for only moments and return again, centuries would have passed. That explained the sensation she felt, once again peering into his dark gaze. She wouldn’t look away; she’d trained herself better than that. Then again, she reasoned, it wasn’t an option. She couldn’t divert her gaze if she wanted. The hold upon her stare was stronger than any ropes or chains made by man. Claire knew from experience, submitting to the hold was her best chance at survival. Fighting was a futile waste of energy.
Aleatha Romig
If the truth gets in the way, I will remove it. But truth be told, removing the truth never removes the truth.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
Ernest Hemingway