Quotes by American Authors - Page 116

There is nothing sane, merciful, heroic, devout, redemptive, wise, holy, loving, peaceful, joyous, righteous, gracious, remotely spiritual, or worthy of praise where mass murder is concerned. We have been in this world long enough to know that by now and to understand that nonviolent conflict resolution informed by mutual compassion is the far better option.
Aberjhani
There is no envy, jealousy, or hatred between the different colors of the rainbow. And no fear either. Because each one exists to make the others’ love more beautiful.
Aberjhani
It is not about the glory of the human form more about being human.
Tim Mann artist
Being totally inclusive is essential for the outcome to possess any true value
Tim Mann artist
In the last 10 years, we have seen a rise in selfishness: selfies, self-absorbed people, superficiality, self-degradation, apathy, and self-destruction. So I challenge all of you to take initiative to change this programming. Instead of celebrating the ego, let's flip the script and celebrate the heart. Let's put the ego and celebrity culture to sleep, and awaken the conscience. This is the battle we must all fight together to win back our humanity. To save our future and our children.
Suzy Kassem
A woman's body is a sacred temple. A work of art, and a life-giving vessel. And once she becomes a mother, her body serves as a medicine cabinet for her infant. From her milk she can nourish and heal her own child from a variety of ailments. And though women come in a wide assortment as vast as the many different types of flowers and birds, she is to reflect divinity in her essence, care and wisdom. God created a woman's heart to be a river of love, not to become a killing machine.
Suzy Kassem
There is within the human heart a quality of intelligence which has been known to surpass that attributed to the human mind.
Aberjhani
The human body is sustained by the same prana that nourishes the universe. The body (your equipment) has the ability to control and use this special energy through the use of "pranayama". Don't let true word scare you - it just means to control, channel, and direct the flow of prana through the use of breath.
John Holland
What are the units of ontology really that I should be a part of a whole, but not be, in all my awareness, chiefly the whole unto itself?
Ashim Shanker
Humans recognize the duality, autonomy, and latitude range of the mind and the body, and all humans comprehend their impending mortality. Unlike other animals, humankind knows despair brought about by understanding the inevitability of death of all living creatures. The radius of human thought touching upon the longitude of our transient existence causes infinite pain. Seeking to ameliorate existential anguish incites us to ponder spiritual matters, and this sphere of mental activity spurs us to contemplate the perimeter of unknown frontiers. Our ability to understand the compass of life and death allows us to view the circumference of the world as consisting of a past, a present, and a future in relation to our own lives. How a person views the range of their earthly life and how a person rationalizes their march towards a deathly outback creates a system of beliefs that separate people into classes, and the variations amongst class members’ belief systems supplements who we think we are.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Our work is not about transcending this world to get to a better place; our work is to be fully present here; to heal ourselves, and our planet in the spirit of service and compassion.
Eileen Anglin
The word “inevitable” is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you.
Foundation for Inner Peace
A spiritual reinterpretation of events gives us miraculous authority to command the winds, to part the waters, and to break all chains that bind us.
Marianne Williamson
Energy is what I believe all of us are. We're just conscious awareness dancing for itself for no other reason but to stay amused.
Jim Carrey
Don’t let the enemy try to keep you bound with fear. The devil is a liar. Stay in faith and trust the process. Be still, God has a plan!
Germany Kent
When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.
Annie Dillard
We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consumerism needs children who do not stay attached to their toys for very long and learn to expect the next round of presents as soon as possible. When consumerism succeeds, our attachments are shallow, easily broken, so we can move on to the next thing we're supposed to get. Being a good consumer means desiring new things, not cherishing old ones. And the new things you're supposed to desire are not always material things. Spirituality is now a consumerist enterprise, too.
Phillip Cary
Truth is not a path you follow, but one created by your footsteps.
Frederick Dodson
It is like reading two books, one with each eye, and understanding them both.
Dexter Palmer
Shelly shook her head and made sure she had plenty of space so that she wouldn’t hit anything. As many times before, she kept the hoop close to her waist and then twirled it with small, tight bursts of speed. As the hoop gathered in momentum it started to give off a hum that soon took on a light blue illumination far brighter than the streetlamps. It was so bright, that it lit up the entire backyard.
Nathan Reese Maher
Somehow her hula hoop had cut into the driver’s side door like the vehicle was made of cheese.
Nathan Reese Maher
She could spin it between her legs, skip with it, twirl it around her neck and transfer it from one arm to the other. Shelly hooped because she enjoyed it; it calmed her whenever she would have an argument or a bad day at school, and it also allowed her to think. Today, she needed to hoop more than ever.
Nathan Reese Maher
It’s no big deal. It’s kind of like a tattoo. It won’t hurt, not too much, just a few stitches and it’ll be all over. It’s really interesting how it’s done. You won’t believe where your soul hides. Go on, take a guess. Where do you think it is?
Nathan Reese Maher
There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Sometimes people say or do things that are mean because there's something the matter with them. With Lydia, it seems there’s always something wrong with her.
Nathan Reese Maher
Because I am, just as you are you. We don’t always get to pick who we are, Shelly Wynn, but we can choose to celebrate it.
Nathan Reese Maher
Flowers for Algernon again? she asks. Doesn't that book always make you cry?One day it won't, I say. I want to be sure to be reading it on that day.
Nicola Yoon
The shadow self is what lies beneath the makeup. It’s those ugly parts that you haven’t accepted about yourself. You hide those parts in the shadows until you’re ready.” Her face remained a haunting calm. “When you realize the scars are who you are, that there was nothing wrong with you and that you were beautiful all along - that’s when you decide to take the makeup off.
Nathan Reese Maher
Oscar always said that books are truly our best friends. He said that they never think poorly of us and that they always have a shoulder for us to cry on or relieve stress. They take our minds away from the real world by telling us captivating stories. When we look back at our choice of books, we can nostalgically recall our younger years.
Erica Sehyun Song
Men do everything that men do, from waging war to reading books, for one purpose only: to get laid.
David Burr Gerrard
I thought of all the summer evenings I'd spent sitting in the chairs under the trees beside the trailer, reading books that helped me escape Creek View, at least for a little while. Magical kingdoms, Russian love triangles, and the March sisters couldn't have been further away from the trailer park.
Heather Demetrios
Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper.t The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. “You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man. “Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.” “I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.” “So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?” “Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?” Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. “He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor. “Who is he?” “A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does.
Jeff Phillips
…secondhand bookstores have pilgrims. The words out of print are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.
Kathleen Tessaro
I spent much of my prison time reading. I must have read over 200 large books, mostly fictional stories about the American pioneers, the Vikings, Mafia, etc. As long as I was engrossed in a book, I was not in prison. Reading was my escape.
Frazier Glenn Miller
People with Books. What, in 2007, could be more incongruous than that? It makes me want to l
Michael Chabon
The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.
Dee-Williams
[A]s Agatha Swanburne once said, 'To be kept waiting is unfortunate, but to be kept waiting with nothing interesting to read is a tragedy of Greek proportions.
Maryrose Wood
How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!
Ray Bradbury
There was nothing particularly special about her, except that she was good with numbers, and very good at lying, and she made her home in between the pages of books.
Maggie Stiefvater
Olly: jesus. is there a girl on this planet who doesn't love mr.darcyMadeline: All girls love Mr. Darcy?Olly: are you kidding? even my sister loves darcy and she doesn't love anybodyMadeline: She must love somebody. I'm sure she loves youOlly: what's so great about darcy?Madeline: That's not a serious questionOlly: he's a snobMadeline: But he overcomes it and eventually realizes that character matters more than class! He's a man open to learning life's lessons! Also, he's completely gorgeous and noble and brooding and poetic. Did I mention gorgeous? Also, he loves Elizabeth beyond all reason.
Nicola Yoon
I wanted to read immediately. The only fear was that of books coming to an end.
Eudora Welty
I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.
Roman Payne
Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.
Kelly Link
I wanted a library like this...[] A cave of words that I'd made myself.
Maggie Stiefvater
When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read—with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature.
Andrew Clements
The library is like a candy store where everything is free.
Jamie Ford
The books we read should be chosen with great care, that they may be, as an Egyptian king wrote over his library,'The medicines of the soul.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Reading list (1972 edition)[edit]1.tHomer – Iliad, Odyssey2.tThe Old Testament3.tAeschylus – Tragedies4.tSophocles – Tragedies5.tHerodotus – Histories6.tEuripides – Tragedies7.tThucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War8.tHippocrates – Medical Writings9.tAristophanes – Comedies10.tPlato – Dialogues11.tAristotle – Works12.tEpicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus13.tEuclid – Elements14.tArchimedes – Works15.tApollonius of Perga – Conic Sections16.tCicero – Works17.tLucretius – On the Nature of Things18.tVirgil – Works19.tHorace – Works20.tLivy – History of Rome21.tOvid – Works22.tPlutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia23.tTacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania24.tNicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic25.tEpictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion26.tPtolemy – Almagest27.tLucian – Works28.tMarcus Aurelius – Meditations29.tGalen – On the Natural Faculties30.tThe New Testament31.tPlotinus – The Enneads32.tSt. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine33.tThe Song of Roland34.tThe Nibelungenlied35.tThe Saga of Burnt Njál36.tSt. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica37.tDante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy38.tGeoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales39.tLeonardo da Vinci – Notebooks40.tNiccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy41.tDesiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly42.tNicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres43.tThomas More – Utopia44.tMartin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises45.tFrançois Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel46.tJohn Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion47.tMichel de Montaigne – Essays48.tWilliam Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies49.tMiguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote50.tEdmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene51.tFrancis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis52.tWilliam Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays53.tGalileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences54.tJohannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World55.tWilliam Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals56.tThomas Hobbes – Leviathan57.tRené Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy58.tJohn Milton – Works59.tMolière – Comedies60.tBlaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises61.tChristiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light62.tBenedict de Spinoza – Ethics63.tJohn Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education64.tJean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies65.tIsaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics66.tGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology67.tDaniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe68.tJonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal69.tWilliam Congreve – The Way of the World70.tGeorge Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge71.tAlexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man72.tCharles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws73.tVoltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary74.tHenry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones75.tSamuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets
Mortimer J. Adler
If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.
Anne Fadiman
[One way] researchers sometimes evaluate people's judgments is to compare those judgments with those of more mature or experienced individuals. This method has its limitations too, because mature or experienced individuals are sometimes so set in their ways that they can't properly evaluate new or unique conditions or adopt new approaches to solving problems.
Robert Epstein
Once your baby tree is in the ground, check it daily, because the first three years are critical. Remember that you are your tree's only friend in a hostile world.
Hope Jahren
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.
Elon Musk
It suddenly occurred to me just how absurd this scene was: a guy wearing a suit of armor, standing next to an undead king, both hunched over the controls of a classic arcade game. It was the sort of surreal image you'd expect to see on the cover of an old issue of Heavy Metal or Dragon magazine.
Ernest Cline
Politicized science is like a prostitute with an STD. You know she has been fucked by a dirty politician.
A.E. Samaan
It illuminated a vision Dante could not have imagined in his wildest nightmares, nor Poe in the grasp of an uncontrollable delirium.
Alan Dean Foster
That's what drives science though: trying to find out the way things are, the way they were, and the way it really works. If that is your goal, then you want to make sure that your information is accurate, and if it's not, then it doesn't matter how much you liked that old urban legend or fictional factoid you once bought into. You will discard it, and be embarrassed by it, seeking instead for truth.
Aron Ra
… there are no arbitrary constants ... nature is so constituted that it is possible logically to lay down such strongly determined laws that within these laws only rationally determined constants occur (not constants, therefore, whose numerical value could be changed without destroying the theory).
Albert Einstein
The fine-structure constant is ubiquitous throughout physics. I’ve already noted its connection to the electromagnetic interaction. In atomic physics, the binding energy, fine-structure splitting, and Lamb shift are all proportional to powers of α. In condensed matter physics, α characterizes Josephson junction oscillations and quantum Hall resistance steps. In addition, α is an important component of our system of fundamental constants. [Physics Today]
Gerald Gabrielse
An individual cannot be considered entirely sane if he is wholly ignorant of scientific method and structure of nature and so retains primitive semantic reactions.
Alfred Korzybski
Hoh, Boy!" Freddy snorted, slapping his palm to his forehead. "I hope you never donate your brain to science. It would set civilization back fifty years.
Bertrand R. Brinley
In 1988, a cave explorer named Véronique Le Guen volunteered for an extreme experiment: to live alone in an underground cavern in southern France without a clock for one hundred and eleven days, monitored by scientists who wished to study the human body's natural rhythms in the absence of time cues. For a while, she settled into a pattern of thirty hours awake and twenty hours asleep. She described herself as being "psychologically completely out of phase, where I no longer know what my values are or what is my purpose in life."When she returned to society, her husband later noted, she seemed to have an emptiness inside her that she was unable to fully express. "While I was alone in my cave I was my own judge," she said. "You are your own most severe judge. You must never lie or all is lost. The strongest sentiment I brought out of the cave is that in my life I will never tolerate lying." A little more than a year later, Le Guen swallowed an overdose of barbiturates and lay down in her car in Paris, a suicide at age thirty-three.
Michael Finkel