Quotes by American Authors - Page 123

The biggest enemy of western people is not war or terrorism, it is their own governments lack of regulation of public health and safety.
Steven Magee
Computers and mobile devices are becoming known for their inherent insecurities and the ability to damage the long term health of the users.
Steven Magee
The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them – for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn’t entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between people.
Suzy Kassem
We all have thorns in our flesh. All of us. Love is when we stay and help someone pluck out their thorns one-by-one and they do the same for us. Love is also when we pluck the thorns out of our own flesh, one-by-one. But today, the world teaches us that we shouldn’t even see those thorns, that we should only see the petals. As a result, we don’t know how to love ourselves and we don’t know how to love others. Stay with the darkness, and bring that darkness into the light. It’s there, look at it.
C. JoyBell C.
It's possible that Knight believed he was one of the few sane people left. He was confounded by the idea that passing the prime of your life in a cubicle, spending hours a day at a computer, in exchange for money, was considered acceptable, but relaxing in a tent in the woods was disturbed. Observing the trees was indolent; cutting them down was enterprising. What did Knight do for a living? He lived for a living.
Michael Finkel
His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human.To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.
Michael Finkel
I dont believe knowing can save us. What isconstant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God—who knows all that can be known—seems powerless to change.
Cormac McCarthy
With his release imminent, Knight seems more unsettled than ever. He scratches furiously at his knees. Jail, he's realized, might not be all bad. There's routine and order in jail, and he's able to click into a survival mode that is not too dissimilar, in terms of steeliness of mental state, to the one he'd perfected during winters in the woods. "I'm surrounded in here by less than desirable people," he says, "but at least I wasn't thrown into the waters of society and expected to swim.
Michael Finkel
Are people innately altruistic?" is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated--for good or ill--if only you find the right levers.
Steven D. Levitt
Quality, relevant content can't be spotted by an algorithm. You can't subscribe to it. You need people - actual human beings - to create or curate it.
Kristina Halvorson
It is really irritating to work with irritating people
Joshua Ferris
Our freedoms are vanishing. If you do not get active to take a stand now against all that is wrong while we still can, then maybe one of your children may elect to do so in the future, when it will be far more riskier — and much, much harder.
Suzy Kassem
In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.
James Madison
People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations when what they really need is imagination.
Paul David Tripp
It's not that we spend five days looking forward to just two. It's that most people do what they enjoy most on those two days. Imagine living a life where everyday are your Saturdays and Sundays. Make everyday your weekend. Make everyday a play-day…
James A. Murphy
I believe all people are assholes. You won't find anyone that you like. You'll just find someone you dislike a little less than the last asshole. And I can't wait for that day. To have a woman that I can say I dislike a little less than all the other assholes.
Travis J. Dahnke
Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to "season" people.
Vera Nazarian
Maybe a person's world can grow bigger in all the right ways, not too wide that it becomes shallow, just large enough to preserve its depth.
Deb Caletti
He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate's face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other's skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath.
Victoria Schwab
I wasn’t a nerd, mind you, but I’d spent a lot of my youth studying Epics, so I’d had limited experience with social interaction. I mixed with ordinary people about the same way that a bucket of paint mixed with a bag of gerbils.
Brandon Sanderson
Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment.
Suzy Kassem
If you give people tools, and they use their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
Bill Gates
A friend is a person whom you can love without judging and share your thoughts without fearing.
Debasish Mridha
We’ve made it private, contained it in family, when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We’ve fetishized it as romance, when its true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We’ve lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being. It is the elemental experience we all desire and seek, most of our days, to give and receive. The sliver of love’s potential that the Greeks separated out as eros is where we load so much of our desire, center so much of our imagination about delight and despair, define so much of our sense of completion. There is the love the Greeks called filia—the love of friendship. There is the love they called agape—love as embodied compassion, expressions of kindness that might be given to a neighbor or a stranger. The Metta of the root Buddhist Pali tongue, “lovingkindness,” carries the nuance of benevolent, active interest in others known and unknown, and its cultivation begins with compassion towards oneself.
Krista Tippett
The old you has been left behind to leave place for the new you. And it will be a new you that your new friends will admire, that your old friends will struggle to understand and that your true friends will learn to embrace.
lauren klarfeld
MY MOONI'll always wonder what time it is there; if you're dreaming, or awake. My moon is your sun; my darkness, your light. I'm in the future, you'd jokingly say.And I know where you are, because I'm watching you from the past.
Coco J. Ginger
When you meet someone, and you find that they are prejudiced against your kind, it might be your chance, not to confirm, but to be the one to finally change their mind.
Criss Jami
And no matter what closet we were thrown in, up what river we were sold for an embarrassment, or worse, traded for a bottle of gin--we’d carry on in playful stitches, friends‘til the end…which came sooner than wished.
Kristen Henderson
Once, I took the penny whistle you gave me and discovered a spotby the roaring falls where I could play as loud as I wanted. I lay in the bifurcated trunkof a low-slung birch tree. The sun peeked through applauding leaves, high overhead.
Kristen Henderson
2. Overcommitment and time pressure are the greatest destroyers of marriages. It takes time to develop any friendship...whether with a loved one or with God Himself.
James C. Dobson
The smile on his face said, pure and simple, those honey cakes came with a price. And his price was answers.
Melanie Crowder
Love never lives on a one-way street, for it will always come back up the road bigger than how we had sent it down the road.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Yet while Owllwin was arrogant, he was also humble enough to admit when he had made a mistake. Perhaps it was his sheer clumsiness that kept him so humble: the first time he spoke to Cricket was in the great dining hall, and he brought down six tables five minutes after.
Ash Gray
Friends don't let friends go to hell."- Johann Gunter in "The Bucktown Babies
Janine R Pestel
If I could have one friend,just one in all the world,I know that I would not seek outa boy or pretty girl.The friend I’d dare to chooseto stand by me each daywould be a dragon fierce enoughto scare the world away.
Richelle E. Goodrich
All close friendships are marked with competition. Our earliest tests are against our siblings and playmates, and some of that rivalry endures amongst friends into adulthood. Like dogs play fighting, you learn not to bite hard.
Christopher Bollen
As I looked out at the water, I realized there was nowhere to go, nowhere left to run. And I just had to stay here facing this terrible truth. I felt, as more tears fell, just how tired I was, a tiredness that had nothing to do with the hour. I was tired of running from this, tired of pretending that things were okay when they had never, ever been less okay.
Morgan Matson
While watching the revelry in the Barn, I'd had an epiphany. Parties weren't just about who was who and being seen. It was about letting go. About celebrating that we all made it through one more boring week. Everyone came together in one place, and for a while, it was as if nothing mattered except the music and the energy and being away from all of the adults in our lives. These parties were about freedom. And friendship. They were about friendship too.
Chelsea Sedoti
You must work to live, not live to work.
Jane Green
I am not a people pleaser. I am not a person who says things because she thinks it will make the other person happy, nor am I a person who offers things she cannot deliver because I want the other person to like me.
Jane Green
Forever feels a long time when you're eighteen. When you're away from home for the first time in your life, when you forge instant friendships that are so strong they are destined, surely, to be with you until the bitter end.
Jane Green
That's the problem with lying. You can never remember what you've said.
Jane Green
Ad we interviewing each other?Something like that.What position am I applying for?Best friend.I thought I already had the job.Don't be so sure, you arrogant son of a bitch.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
They took Daisy to the orangery, where warm autumn light glittered through the windows, and the scents of citrus and bay hung thick in the air. Removing Daisy's heavy orange-blossom wreath and veil, Lillian set them aside on a chair.There was a silver tray on a nearby table, laden with a bottle of chilled champagne and four tall crystal glasses."This is a special toast for you, dear," Lillian said, while Annabelle poured the sparkling liquid and handed the glasses out. "To your happy ending. Since you've had to wait for it longer than the rest of us, I'd say you deserve the entire bottle." She grinned. "But we're going to share it with you anyway."Daisy curved her fingers around the crystal stem. "It should be a toast for all of us," she said. "After all, three years ago we had the worst marriage prospects imaginable. We couldn't even get an invitation to dance. And look how well things turned out.""All it t-took was some devious behavior and a few scandals here and there," Evie said with a smile."And friendship," Annabelle added."To friendship," Lillian said, her voice suddenly husky.And their four glasses clicked in one perfect moment.
Lisa Kleypas
You'll notice you don't have both feet on the ground when you don't have any friends around
Stanley Victor Paskavich
There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hope you don't mind being disturbed by some mere wog and upstart.' The remedy for this was not to indulge it but to reply with bracing and satirical stuff which would soon get the gurgling laugh back into his throat. But I'm glad I didn't say, 'What, Edward, splashing about again in the waters of self-pity?' because this time he was calling to tell me that he had contracted a rare strain of leukemia. Not at all untypically, he used the occasion to remind me that it was very important always to make and keep regular appointments with one’s physician.
Christopher Hitchens
I do give them to you," he announced. "Of my free will. Because this is my sword." He laid a hand on Arisa's shoulder. "And Weasle is my shield. What you hold are only pieces of iron.
Hilari Bell
Favorite Quotations.I speak my mind because it hurts to bite my tongue.The worth of a book is measured by what you carry away from it. It's not over till it's over. Imagination is everything. All life is an experiment. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.
Pat Frayne
....finally I see that it’s never been me, just a blanket that keeps you warm. Easily tossed alongwhen something flashier or someone prettier comes along. Your heart I held so carefully, I see, this was all just a game...
Coco J. Ginger
Too bad Jason wasn’t a metal automaton. At least then Leo would have some idea of how to help his best friend. But with humans … Leo felt helpless. They broke way too easily.
Rick Riordan
Thunderstorms are as much our friends as the sunshine.
Criss Jami
Always surround yourself with friends that have plenty of light in them. That way, you will always have candles around you when days are dark.
Suzy Kassem
I wish I could say we all lived happily ever after. I can't. But I can say we lived. Our love for Nate lives, and he's left us this piece of himself in his art; it was his gift to us. We know him through his art, and I can take comfort in that. I guess the thing about high school is, it's the moment when you start to cross from a being a kid to being an adult, and this journey to know yourself begins. Nate's journey ended to early, and I thought I had to run away to some far-off land to start mine. But, for now, it seems to me that I have enough to explore right here. There's a whole continent to discover in myself, and I know that it's love - love for my parents, my friends, my brother, and my art - that will guide me. Love will be my map.
Lisa Ann Sandell
Everyone lives in two worlds,” Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. “There’s the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren’t. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought—in an inscape—every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives.
Joe Hill
Ten minutes with a genuine friend is better than years spent with anyone less.
Crystal Woods
Was it you or I who stumbled first? It does not matter. The one of us who finds the strength to get up first, must help the other.
Vera Nazarian
Celebrate the people in your life who are there because they love you for no other reason than because you are YOU.
Mandy Hale
I dislike the phrase 'Internet friends,' because it implies that people you know online aren't really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance.
John Green
I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying 'flee at once - all is discovered.' They all left town immediately.
Mark Twain
There are two kinds of friendship: the beneficial friendship and the erroneous friendship. The erroneous friendship balances on the principle of "the closer we are, the more okay it is for me to say anything I want to you and for me to treat you any way that I want to, and for me to disrespect you and take advantage of you" while a true friendship is rooted in this principle: "the closer we are, the more respect I have for you, the better I will treat you, the higher I will regard you, the more good things I will wish for you." You will know someone is a true friend by basis of observing their actions towards you as the friendship grows deeper. A true friend will continue to hold you in higher and higher regard while the error of a friend will see your goodwill and newfound fondness as basis to do and say whatever he/she wants, that is disrespectful and non-beneficial to you.
C. JoyBell C.