Quotes by American Authors - Page 110

I propose that the forces of corporate totalitarianism are deliberately destroying this entire world in order to sell their simulated version of it back to us at a profit.
Diane Harvey
If you do not understand the Golden Rule, which is the most important law in the universe, then you are in trouble. All other rules in your holy books combined — are not as valuable as the ONE Golden Rule. Take two minutes to learn the most crucial law in life. Killing another human comes with the highest penalty, regardless of how you justify it. All life is sacred.
Suzy Kassem
Irony: Taking a 170-year-old envy-based "philosophy," which has led to the murder of several hundred million human beings and the oppression of billions more, and calling it "progressive".
Larken Rose
Good Samaritan is only good when they think no one else will be the Good Samaritan.
Vann Chow
Be very careful when you judge another human being. Do not measure anybody strictly based on the bad you see in them and ignore all the good. Be wary of any man who intentionally ignores another man's record of deeds or work history simply to impose their own agenda. Such a man's judgment lacks merit and should be disregarded immediately. Without a conscience, there is no truth in them.
Suzy Kassem
perhaps the problem of evil is a human problem, one of an egotistical mind-set, an anthropocentric bent in our thinking and perspective.
Jacob M. Held
If we stop helping people because we’re afraid, or ambivalent or whatever, then we lose. Let them do evil. I’ll stop them.
Brandon Sanderson
True evil is unlikely to receive an invitation from us, so it clothes itself in just enough truth to make itself look appealing and then it looks to unpeel us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Confrontation is not bad. Goodness is supposed to confront evil.
Fred Shuttlesworth
Comrade, your statement is factually incorrect.” “Yes, it is. But it is politically correct.” (The Rise of Political Correctness)
Angelo Codevilla
You are quite right, I changed my mind and do no longer speak of “radical evil.” … It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth that can be radical.(letter to Scholem from December 1964)
Hannah Arendt
He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
Rick Riordan
Jan could not recall ever seeing a creature more beautiful, though there nagged somewhere at the back of his mind the notion that she ought to have seemed hideous. Why? For she was pure, admirably pure, without a twinge of conscience or shame.
Meredith Ann Pierce
Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well. And, if I'd tell you why he's now under house arrest in Argentina, you might get a sense of the horror I felt as I was asking him questions about all this. He's in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who's done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that.
Christopher Hitchens
O [Roman] people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live...Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us...The Goths lie, but are chaste, the Franks lie, but are but are generous, the Saxons are savage in cruelty...but are admirable in chastity...what hope can there be [for the Romans] when the barbarians are more pure [than they]?"-Salvian
William J. Federer
At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook.
William Styron
George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.
Christopher Hitchens
Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.
Saul Bellow
If evil had a laugh, she thought it would sound like his.
Nenia Campbell
His voice was low, and I think he would've been hot if he weren't radiating that air of "I Am Super Evil--No, Really--And Not In The Sexy Way.
Rachel Hawkins
The daggers of silence last longer than anything ever spoken.
Shannon L. Alder
The world we suggest is a new wild west. A sensuous evil world. Strange and haunting, the path of the sun…
Jim Morrison
But that I should have ended up in a place like this seems too custom-made a nightmare to be the work of mere ill fortune.
Zoë Heller
The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.
Robert Penn Warren
A lot of things should have been, Zigmund, but they aren’t. Are you going to be miserable about the things you cannot change, or do something about the things you can?
Melika Dannese Lux
What is the likelihood, of winning the lottery, then lose it all the next day when you step out your front door and get struck by lightning? Probably, very slim, but then anything is possible.
Anthony Liccione
Making plans is a game. Life chooses for you.
Anita Diamant
How do you change the inevitable? The act of trying to change it could actually cause it to happen.
Travis Luedke
There will be times in which things appear hopeless. You will begin to doubt everything around you. You will even begin to doubt yourself. You will think things will never look up and you may be in the deepest, darkest, loneliest place in the world. Everything which had once been infused with wonder may appear disappointing and harsh. You may grow cynical and come to believe that this is simply the way the world is...that one must bear with the unforgiving realities of the world and only hope that it doesn’t get worse. You might grow suspicious of others, as adults tend to do, and close yourself off from the rest of the world. You might just look to the past and reminisce about better days...or you might just dwell in one place for a little too long and become nostalgic for the future. Just remember—regardless of where you are, what experiences you have, and who you have become—that there will always be those who have loved you. Those whom you may have taken for granted, but have nonetheless, always had you in their hearts and in their hopes and wishes. Lives that you have touched: whether you realize it or not. To separation you may venture, but indissolubly in union shall you drift...you will always be at the whims of forces, both great and small, and far beyond your capacity to control. That’s how all our stories go. Innumerable arcs intersect and scatter into a vast indefinite sea.
Ashim Shanker
Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed."If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'dbeen kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed,deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now.
V.C. Andrews
This is just your unwritten life. You didn’t expect it, it just happened.
Amy Shannon
Once upon a time, there was a man as great as the gods…But even the great can tremble with fear.Even the great can fall
Mary E. Pearson
If we were always given a choice as to every path presented us in life, a multitude of roads leading to priceless treasures would forever go untraveled.Be grateful for your adversities. From toil and triumph evolves a life worth li
Richelle E. Goodrich
But something-luck, fate, conspiracy, whatever you want to call it-has thrown us together." He leaned forward, his gaze never leaving her face. "Of all the crazy places in the world, here we are, at the same table, in the same dirty Vietnamese cafe. And..." He paused, his brown eyes warm, his crooked smile a fleeting glimmer in his seriousness. "I'm beginning to think it's time we gave in and followed this crazy script. Time we followed our instincts.
Tess Gerritsen
The first verse that comes to mind that refutes all of Calvin’s points is “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Whoever means whoever. Not just some, not just the elect; that means that anyone who wants to come to God and repent may do so. There is not a certain group that is predestined for hell and they can't do anything about it. How then would God be just? Knowing God’s nature, and that he IS love, I simply cannot believe that and believe it to be a completely false teaching.
Lisa Bedrick
And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.
Jennifer E. Smith
It's the way we deal with what fate hands us that defines who we are.
Lisa Graff
We are constantly immersed in a network of signs and symbols whose meaning eludes us, but which, if only we could read them, would reveal every detail of our past and even predict our future. Like anticipatory echoes, they tingle in our consciousness, building in crescendo until the event they herald becomes fully manifest. Afterwards, they linger for a time before being drowned out by a new tide of signs rushing in upon us. Such signatures are everywhere...
Linda Lappin
I wish I knew how to get you back. And apparently fate won't let me give up"From Central Park Song: a Screenplay
Zack Love
In some mystical way, Lenny seemed to ennoble work more than anyone I had ever met"Also in "Stories and Scripts:an Anthology
Zack Love
I have a proposition for you,” she said, trying for a businesslike tone. “A very sensible one. You see—” She paused to clear her throat. “I’ve been thinking about your problem.” “What problem?” Cam played lightly with the folds of her skirts, watching her face ale
Lisa Kleypas
If I had spoken to him out loud, he would have understood the tragic fate of those who came back, left over, living dead. You must look at them carefully. Their appearance is deceptive. They are smugglers. They look like the others. They eat, they laugh, they love. The seek money, fame, love. Like the other. But it isn't true; they are playing, sometimes without even knowing it. Anyone who has seen what THEY have seen cannot be like the others, cannot laugh, love, pray, bargain, suffer, have fun, or forget. Like the others. You have to watch them carefully when they pass by an innocent-looking smokestack, or when they lift a piece of bread to their mouths. Something in them shudders and makes you turn your eyes away. These people have been amputated; they haven't lost their legs or eyes, but their will and their taste for life. The things they have seen will come to the surface again sooner or later. And then the world will be frightened and won't dare look these spiritual cripples in the eye.
Elie Wiesel
Such ordeals always strike one with their strangeness, their digression from the normal flow of events, and often provoke a universal protest: "Why me?" Be sure that this is not a question but an outcry. The person who screams it has been instilled with an astonishing suspicion that he, in fact, has been the perfect subject for a very specific "weird," a tailor-made fate, and that a prior engagement, in all its weirdness, was fulfilled at the appointed time and place.
Thomas Ligotti
Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a coincidence is just a coincidence.
Stephen King
He had the strangest feeling come over him, which he'd never before known. Like he was meeting his best friend, for the first time. It was recognition mixed with relief...but also some amount of joy. Like, "Oh, there you are! It's so great to meet you finally! I've missed you!
Elizabeth Gannon
Warner. A white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. A fair - skinned boy with gold hair, the leader of Sector 45. It was always him. All along . The link.
Tahereh Mafi
Sacredness and profanity and prayers and wishes: they're all held together by the broken limbs of this dead tree, raking the night sky with its blackened branches. We are so small, the two of us. The tree and sky are so large and grand. We could fail so easily, fall before we've begun to rise.
Elora Bishop
That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.
Anna Godbersen
Grace is not a doctrine or a religion. It is a person, Jesus Christ.
John Paul Warren
Sacraments are like hoses. They are the channels of the living water of God's grace. Our faith is like opening the faucet. We can open it a lot, a little, or not at all.
Peter Kreeft
We are suspicious of grace. We are afraid of the very lavishness of the gift.
Madeleine L'Engle
We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.
Dean Koontz
Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
We are no longer under the 'Law', but rather the Grace of God in Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
R. Alan Woods
He would know a number of grown women in his life who did not possess even a small portion of the grace his middle sister owned at the age of fourteen.
James Carlos Blake
If it wasn’t for all those silver wings spread out to help you on your journey, you would’a been dead or someplace screamin’ in a nut house a long time ago.
Aberjhani
God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turned out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up "Amazing Grace.
Frederick Buechner
I am not interested in having the world revolve around me; that's too boring of an idea. I would rather revolve around the world and try to leave my fingerprints, everywhere. My fingerprints mingled in with all the other fingerprints and all the laughter and all the beautiful things like gratitude, grace, faithfulness and flowers.
C. JoyBell C.
There are many things evil people can take from you. However, they can never steal your ability to laugh and laugh loud.
Shannon L. Alder
Evangelicals believe they are saved by grace through faith but then add a man-made waiver that you have to work as hard as you can can meet middle-class behavioral patterns to hang onto it.
Steve Stockman