Quotes by American Authors - Page 11

The thing with heat is, no matter how cold you are, no matter how much you need warmth, it always, eventually, becomes too much.
Victoria Aveyard
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
George Washington
I suspect the next 10 years will be years of turmoil and hardship the globe over, and with that will come a surge in a certain kind of American patriotism. Therefore, American Christians will be challenged to remember where our true fealty lies. I’m not saying there’s no place for patriotism. But Christians are people whose first allegiance cannot be to a nation-state, not to any nation-state. Increased geopolitical tension may tempt us to forget that.
Lauren F. Winner
If there is any solace to be found in the carnage of September 11th, may I find it in understanding that the potential to do great good can handily rival the tendency to carry out great evil. And out of that understanding may I commit in my own life to make certain that in such a critical rivalry I will ensure that towers will never fall because of me, but people will be raised up due to me.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Many confuse the United States with the Church or the Constitution with the Bible. They feel that the good of the United States is the same as the good of the Kingdom of God. Some feel that the Constitution of the United States is as infallible as the Bible. However, one with wisdom notice that some things are Kingdom principles and some are not.
Gayle D. Erwin
The nature of life is mess, chaotic, exquisitely beautiful, excruciatingly painful, immensely joy-filled, and unpredictable.
Debra Moffitt
it struck me as an operational way to define free will, in a way that allowed you to reconcile free will with determinism. The system is deterministic, but you can’t say what it’s going to do next.
James Gleick
a finger pointing with particular aim too far from the goal in effect points at everything.
Lindsey Drager
What you call your lies are fiction and myths. The art of creating a disguise can be as beautiful as the creation of a painting… I created a woman for my artist life, bold, gay, courageous, generous, fearless; and another to please my father, a clear-sighted woman with a love of beauty, harmony, and self-discipline, critical and selective; and still another who lives in chaos, embraces the weak and the stumbling and the confused.
Anaïs Nin
Sometimes chaos is the very thing that deliberately shakes up our neatly ordered world’s in order to get us out of the neatly ordered ruts that have kept us stuck.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
But nobody ever tells you in advance when you should concentrate on the good times-that's why you're supposed to do it every day.
Jordan Sonnenblick
Appreciate what you have, while you have it, or you’ll learn what it meant to you after you lose it.
Frank Sonnenberg
Sexual temptations are lurking around every corner in our lives today! Resisting the temptation to gratify the flesh is a full-time job.
Gary Rohrmayer
The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.
Brené Brown
You have to risk falling to be able to fly.
Debasish Mridha
People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
Peter F Drucker
I wanted him to meet Ainsley. She was super important to me. I made my decision. “I...I would like that.”Rider’s reaction was immediate. He smiled and the dimple appeared. My breath caught. I’d actually invited Rider along to meet Ainsley. I wanted that. Really wanted that, but I had no idea what to do with that.Regardless, excitement hummed through me. Hanging out with Rider and Ainsley was normal. Something a million people probably did every day, because they were actually living life, but it was a first for me—a huge first. It was my best friend and it was the guy...the guy who’d been my best friend and who now, despite everything, felt like something deeper, richer and more intricate, hanging out together.It felt important.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
The one factor that nobody can deny in life is the influence of weather; it makes demands upon human beings, every person faces its reality. Weather reminds us that the world is not composed of technological gismos and climate controlled office buildings.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
Maya Angelou
Don't focus on who let you down. Appreciate who lifted you up. Don't focus on who darkened your days. Appreciate who brightened them.
Karen Salmansohn
The late 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. They were an age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Seas or the West Indies, or better still for Paris, from which they could scatter to Majorca, Corsica, Capri or the isles of Greece. Paris itself was a modern city that seemed islanded in the past, and there were island countries, like Mexico, where Americans could feel that they had escaped from everything that oppressed them in a business civilization. Or without leaving home they could build themselves private islands of art or philosophy; or else - and this was a frequent solution - they could create social islands in the shadow of the skyscrapers, groups of close friends among whom they could live as unconstrainedly as in a Polynesian valley, live without moral scruples or modern conveniences, live in the pure moment, live gaily on gin and love and two lamb chops broiled over a coal fire in the grate. That was part of the Greenwich Village idea, and soon it was being copied in Boston, San Francisco, everywhere.
Malcolm Cowley
No civilization, no matter how mighty it may appear to itself, is indestructible.
Niall Ferguson
According to an ancient Chinese legend, one day in the year 240 B.C., Princess Si Ling-chi was sitting under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her teacup. When she tried to remove it, she noticed that the cocoon had begun to unravel in the hot liquid. She handed the loose end to her maidservant and told her to walk. The servant went out of the princess's chamber, and into the palace courtyard, and through the palace gates, and out of the Forbidden City, and into the countryside a half mile away before the cocoon ran out. (In the West, this legend would slowly mutate over three millennia, until it became the story of a physicist and an apple. Either way, the meanings are the same: great discoveries, whether of silk or of gravity, are always windfalls. They happen to people loafing under trees.)
Jeffrey Eugenides
The characters who go to make up my stories and novels are not portraits. Characters I invent along with the story that carries them. Attached to them are what I've borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, bit by bit, of persons I have seen or noticed or remembered in the flesh - a cast of countenance here, a manner of walking there, that jumps to the visualizing mind when a story is under way. I don't write by invasion into the life of a real person: my own sense of privacy is too strong for that; and I also know instinctively that living people to whom you are close - those known to you in ways too deep, too overflowing, ever to be plumbed outside love - do not yield to, could never fit into, the demands of a story. Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write most entirely out of yourself, that a character becomes in its own right another human being on the page.
Eudora Welty
Good luck is a residue of preparation.
Jack Youngblood
Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Memphis found his smile. 'You know me, sir. I don't wear worry.
Libba Bray
protectionI requested the figures on OSHA whistle-blower complaints made and the number actually upheld. OSHA refused to supply them. They also refused to uphold my OSHA complaints and provide whistle-blower protection to me. My independent research leads me to understand that they uphold almost no OSHA whistle-blower complaints. It is very concerning that it seems like the same thing is happening with complaints made to Police Internal Affairs.
Steven Magee
Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as 'the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petaín and Papa Doc.' But the main problem, alas, remained the same. In Edward's moral universe, Arafat could at last be named as a thug and a practitioner of corruption and extortion. But he could only be identified as such to the extent that he was now and at last aligned with an American design. Thus the only truly unpardonable thing about 'The Chairman' was his readiness to appear on the White House lawn with Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton in 1993. I have real knowledge and memory of this, because George Stephanopoulos—whose father's Orthodox church in Ohio and New York had kept him in touch with what was still a predominantly Christian Arab-American opinion—called me more than once from the White House to help beseech Edward to show up at the event. 'The feedback we get from Arab-American voters is this: If it's such a great idea, why isn't Said signing off on it?' When I called him, Edward was grudging and crabby. 'The old man [Arafat] has no right to sign away land.' Really? Then what had the Algiers deal been all about? How could two states come into being without mutual concessions on territory?
Christopher Hitchens
Oh, if only I could hurt with such misery once again, to feel the powers of love here inside my heart, the joys of heaven and the pains of hell!
Victor Villaseñor
If only they could listen with their hearts & not their minds, maybe then they would understand that often times it's the emotions not spoken that are longing to be heard.
Christine Upton
A chaotic mix of emotions churned inside him. Relief. Anger. Longing. She was the last person in the world he wanted to see. She was the only person in the world he wanted to see.
Laura Oliva
You know someone is special to you when you're literally captivated by them in even the little moments. The slightest thing they say or do, is like watching the universe unfold. And nothing else matters in those moments.Where you go about your day, & the most capricious of things send you into a whirlwind of thoughts connected to them. And a plethora of thoughts flood into your mind, for no apparent reason other than its them.Or perhaps, you randomly see a picture of them in your news feed & you just pause & look, & the world melts away & all time seems to stop, & there's a radiance that illuminates your life. And you focus on the little details, & wish you could just capture every single detail vividly. And you see their eyes, & though they're merely a moment in time, their eyes are so beautiful, that they transcend the medium & are as if they're there looking back. And all you can do it look into them. Knowing those eyes are what you could look into endlessly. And you know that it's all you could ever want, if for just a single moment in time.Or they share their thoughts, & you rack your brain around how they think. An you just want to understand & know more of their thoughts, simply because they're theirs.They, to you, are a more elegant work of art than even the finest painting, songs or poems of the great artists. And you know that even the most renowned artist couldn't conceive of a more perfect image of beauty. Leonardo, Van Gough, Rembrandt, Picasso, the most renowned artist of time would go mad in attempts to capture even a fraction of such a beautiful sight. That even Shakespeare couldn't put such a person into words. Though there's no doubt they're worthy of being the subject of a Shakespearean sonnet. But it could do no justice to their reality, that because there are no words that truly could ever describe them, even such an attempt would be like trying to describe the complex, wondrous & marvelous nature of the universe in but a single word.That no words, paintings, pictures, or thought could describe them & encapsulate the essence of their grace. And that though no one is truly perfect, they as a person through your eyes, reach a state as near perfect as you could imagine. And even dreams couldn't conceive of a greater wonder of life. It's as if the sum of all the beauty in the world can be found within this one person.It's wonderful, inspiring, breathtaking. Or rather, it's a whirlwind of emotions. Where the wonder & awe bleed into & merge with the disheartening longing, utter belief that you could not for a second touch that with you so desperately struggle & grasp for & an inability to even breath in the moments you're interacting with them.But it's all the more maddening because with all the wanting of your heart, you know it's wanting for something it could never have. That for all your wanting, you know such things are simply & purely unobtainable. And all you can do is hold to adoration & hopes. Hopes that you in your heart know fully are hopeless, but which you can't help but maintain. I think few things are more maddening than that feelings.Most people, when face with such a situation, might despair & grow cynical. But so seldom do we ever meet someone who so maddeningly captivates us, so seldom someone who's very existence throws your world upside down.In a time in which genuine emotion is a scarcity. And pseudo-emotions, frivolous & quick to fade, are rampant. The genuine article is something I cherish. When something makes you feel anything, it's something amazing. Regardless if it's a fervent concoction of the greatest good & the saddest sad. The experience of meeting such a person, who can spark such thoughts & feeling, is a genuine rarity. One in which a given person could go a lifetime without experiencing, but which is worth experiencing. And something that, though ultimately heartbreaking, I wouldn't give up experiencing.
Trevor Driggers
Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount, because its foes resist with greater desperation as they contemplate their final defeat. Thus any problem in the Soviet Union could be defined as an example of enemy action, and enemy action could be defined as evidence of progress.P. 41
Timothy Snyder
Socialism and Communism have failed, but now Capitalism is failing us.
Jo M. Sekimonyo
Why is it that we who have enjoyed the human free­doms which our forefathers fought so hard to win and to bequeath to us, do not, with the example of Russia before us, realize the horrors of life without freedom? Why is it that we cannot understand that there is no such thing as embracing Communism as an experiment? It is a one-way street, ending in a cul de sac of secret police terror, firing squads for the intellectuals and leaders and concentration camps and slave labor for the masses. There is no turning back; there is no escape.
Freda Utley
What had been a region of model farming became almost a desert, for more than half the population was exiled or sent to concentration camps. The young people left the villages, the boys to go to the factories if they could get jobs, or to become vagabonds if they couldn’t.***An echo of the tragic fate of Russia’s German Protestant population reached the world when the Mennonites flocked to Moscow and sought permission to leave the country. Some of these Germans had tried to obey the government and had formed collective farms, only to have them liquidated as Kulak collectives. Being first-class farmers, they had committed the crime of making even a Kolkhoz productive and prosperous.Others had quite simply been expropriated from their individual holdings. All were in despair. Few were allowed to leave Russia. They were sent to Siberia to die, or herded into slave labor concentration camps. The crime of being good farmers was unforgivable, and they must suffer for this sin.***Cheat or be cheated, bully or be bullied, was the law of life. Only the German minority with their strong religious and moral sense—the individual morality of the Protestant as opposed to the mass subservience demanded by the Greek Orthodox Church and the Soviet Government—retained their culture and even some courage under Stalin’s Terror.
Freda Utley
Now we will live!” This is what the hungry little boy liked to say, as he toddled along the quiet roadside, or through the empty fields. But the food that he saw was only in his imagination. The wheat had all been taken away, in a heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe’s era of mass killing. It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Soviet Ukraine. The little boy died, as did more than three million other people. “I will meet her,” said a young Soviet man of his wife, “under the ground.” He was right; he was shot after she was, and they were buried among the seven hundred thousand victims of Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. “They asked for my wedding ring, which I….” The Polish officer broke off his diary just before he was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He was one of about two hundred thousand Polish citizens shot by the Soviets or the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, while Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupied his country. Late in 1941, an eleven-year-old Russian girl in Leningrad finished her own humble diary: “Only Tania is left.” Adolf Hitler had betrayed Stalin, her city was under siege by the Germans, and her family were among the four million Soviet citizens the Germans starved to death. The following summer, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: “I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive.” She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.
Timothy Snyder
American Progressives have declared war on the sanctity and autonomy of the individual.
A.E. Samaan
Having lived in a mythical country, a place neither here nor there, these intellectuals from Vilna and Gomel helped create another and called it the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Such a name! It was hardly a union. The Soviets - workers’ councils - ruled it for about six weeks; socialism impoverished everybody, and only machine guns kept the republics from turning into nations. But to Szarza and the rest it didn’t matter. He’d put his life on the line, preferring simply to die at the wrong end of a gun rather than the wrong end of a club, and for twelve years - until 1929, when Stalin finally took over - he lived in a kind of dream world, a mythical country where idealistic, intellectual Jews actually ran things, quite literally a country of the mind. Theories failed, peasants died, the land itself dried up in despair. Still they worked twenty hours a day and swore they had the answer.
Alan Furst
You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for 'regime change' when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the 'peace' movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor.
Christopher Hitchens
A heart anchored in money will only drift away.
Anthony Liccione
There was something of Francis in the boy, something pure and genuine and flawed. That type didn't think twice before running headlong into a burning house or a young girl's arms.
Johanna Moran
People hide the truth to protect those they love!
Craig Mercier
I'll show Dunky he's not the only one in the family who can rush foolishly into danger!
Christopher Healy
Accidents happen. I will, um . . . I will pay to have your house rebuilt." "And my barn?" a woman called out. Liam sighed. "Yes, and your barn, too." "And my golden carousel?" shouted another man. "Will you pay for that?" Liam raised an eyebrow. "The giant smashed your golden carousel?" "No," said the man. "I'd just like to have a golden carousel.
Christopher Healy
Ha! Good luck, lady!" Gustav laughed and tapped his thick index finger against his temple. "No one knows what goes on inside this head. Not even me.
Christopher Healy
For a hero is someone who is selfless. Think about it, friends. Superman, Luke Skywalker, and Captain America. They are helping others. They aren’t only thinking for themselves. They are reaching out beyond themselves.
Mark Andrew Poe
He was a man. Just a man. Yet, you always knew he'd succeed. He made you be what he wanted you to be.
Brandon Sanderson
The life of hero is the tale of a person overcoming personal hardship and obstacles while striving to achieve an exultant victory that voices repressed citizens’ ecstatic thoughts and dreams.
Kilroy J. Oldster
From there, a more difficult period began. Even the villains, the world's worst people, the one percent, what have you, imagine themselves to be the heroes of their own stories, and I saw myself this way. I, too, could be a hero or protagonist, and not some mere bystander in the greater drama of someone else's life. It was awkward to see a murderer as a hero, so I had to constantly remind myself of how Auggie's stepfather had been selfish and evil.
Alex Kudera
He had you in his room?" A dark cloud crosses Jeb’s face. “Do you swear he didn’t try anything?”“Scout’s honor.”He squeezes my waist, tickling me. “Too bad you were never a Scout.”I squirm and smile. “Nothing happened.”That’s a lie. Morpheus got to me in a big way, showing me a side of myself I can hardly believe exists—one I’m not sure Jeb will be able to accept.
A.G. Howard
Now, it’s time for me to lock up and go. Listen to me. Lock up an empty building that’s gonna be torn down. Makes no sense. Like an old man tellin’ a lie to his son from his death bed. What’s the point? Who besides yourself are you fooling?
Dan Groat
I look for ambiguity because life is ambiguous!
Marko Stout
God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.~Ecclesiastes 3:17
Jessica Fortunato
That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.
John Steinbeck
Every insecure soul has a government of their own and a paid judge in their court room.
Shannon L. Alder
Do you have any idea what the typical response is whenever I do give someone a glimpse of my life?"Gideon paused, as if he waited for her to answer. And Monroe hesitated. Yes. She did know. She knew because it was the same response she would get it she chose to let down her own guard. Hell, it was practically the same response Miles had given the night she had told him the unadulterated truth of her past. She shook her head again. "Standard response," he said. "I swear to God. First thing out of their mouth's is: 'Wow. It's shocking you're so normal.' What the fuck? Do I have to be damaged for my past to make sense? And what the hell is normal anyway? And does white bread America have dibs on it?"Gideon stopped talking, crossed his arms, and the look on his face said he regretted saying as much as he had.
Taylor Stevens
I'm too wacky for most weirdos. Who am I to judge?
Tori Amos
I was now privy to how a calm, average , peace-loving individual can suddenly get infected with a special kind of crazy. Higher reasoning is replaced with killer animal instincts.
Dan Skinner