Quotes by American Authors - Page 144

Spiritual growth is the gradual, I would say, transition from a God of tradition to a God of experience.
Neville Goddard
In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith.
Criss Jami
I might live a life of struggle but I will not live a life of defeat!
Jonathan Anthony Burkett
The gut is the seat of all feeling. Polluting the gut not only cripples your immune system, but also destroys your sense of empathy, the ability to identify with other humans.
Suzy Kassem
Do not recite words just to prove to yourself and others that you know and love God; for he already put his breath and light inside you. Instead, put truth in your every word and action, and always let your conscience steer and guide you.
Suzy Kassem
Remember, nothing is ever created or destroyed. Therefore, unresolved emotional pain from childhood does not dissolve by itself. It sits waiting to be declared, and a child is the ultimate vehicle of expression. In order to transform the energy into something positive, the pain must be brought to the surface, examined and embraced as an experience from which to learn and blossom.
Jennifer Griffin
Parenting requires a delicate balance of letting your child be your spiritual teacher while you maintain the clarity and boundaries to be her Earthly teacher.
Jennifer Griffin
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
Books are like Tarot decks. They provide answers and guidance but more importantly, they are doorways and portals to the otherworld and the imagination. They leave their imprint and keep whispering to us long after we close the pages or shuffle the deck.
Sasha Graham
Do you have an anchor? I have found that a solid anchor is indispensable to one who intends to live life fully. To have an anchor is to be centered and well grounded. It is to have a vital spiritual base.
Steve Goodier
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 Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is passed on by their parents’ egos and other social stimuli. It is born of negativity—of not being good enough thoughts of not having enough, of fear, and worry of failure. Because of its insecure nature, the ego loves to dominate and control others. It’s control or be controlled.
Marco Raye
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
Original sin is a self-initiating act because it evidences human free will. If humanity were devoid of free will, it would relegate humankind to living by instinct. A person who lives by instinct might survive for an enviable period, but they will never live a heroic existence. Every hero’s story commences with an unsatisfied and optimistic person venturing out from the comfortable confines of their common day world, facing forces of fabulous power, and fighting a magnificent personal battle. The greatest traditional heroes were warriors whom survived on the battlefield and learned valuable lessons of honor, love, loyalty, and courage. Heroic warriors and spiritual seekers undertook a rigorous quest, an enduring ordeal that enabled them to transcend their own personhood’s shallow desire merely to survive. By enduring hardships, experiencing breathtaking encounters with the physical world, and undergoing a spiritual renaissance, the hero gains a hard-won sense self-discovery, comprehends his or her place in society, and accepts their role as a teacher. A hero is a bearer of light, wisdom, and charity. The hero reenters society and shares their culmination of knowledge by devoting their life to teaching other people.
Kilroy J. Oldster
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
PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.
Susan Pease Banitt
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
Whenever one of us introduced an old favorite, we savored the other's first delight like a shared meal eaten with a newly acquired gusto, as if we'd never truly tasted it before.
Pamela Paul
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
Who can know when his world is going to change? . . . Who would suspect that in the morning a different child would wake? . . . Perhaps I should have at least known something, but maybe not; who can sense revelation in the wind?What happened was just this: I got hooked on the story.For the first time in my life, I became actively interested in a book. Me the sports fanatic, me the game freak, me the only ten-year-old in Illinois with a hate on for the alphabet wanted to know what happened next.
William Goldman
What would you do if you were a goddess, Cotswold?"Her maid, who had been pulling Eleanor's covers up the bed, stilled her motion. Her expression drew together, as though she were considering it."I suppose I would find the most handsome man in the world and make him my... my..." She waved her hand to indicate the word she shouldn't be saying."Cotswold!" Eleanor exclaimed, delightedly. "That sounds scandalous!""Wouldn't it be what you did?"Eleanor shrugged. "I was thinking more along the lines of being able to have and read all the books I wanted to."Cotswold returned to her task. "Choosing a book over a handsome man." She shook her head, mock ruefully. "And here you were wanting to do something scandalous."The honest part was, it would be scandalous.If it were possible to not be a duke's daughter and be someone else, she would choose to work in a bookshop. Not one that sold the material it seemed Lord Alexander wanted to purchase; one with fairy tales and mythological books and any kind of literature where it was just as likely a dragon would drag you off somewhere as a viscount."I just might," Eleanor said in a defiant tone, making her maid snort.
Megan Frampton
Warning...well-loved stories are habit forming...
Nanette L. Avery
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
If I show up at your house ten years from now and find nothing in your living room but The Readers Digest, nothing on your bedroom night table but the newest Dan Brown novel, and nothing in your bathroom but Jokes for the John, I’ll chase you down to the end of your driveway and back, screaming ‘Where are your books? You graduated college ten years ago, so how come there are no damn books in your house? Why are you living on the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?
Stephen King
I perceived quite early that I was a reader, and most of the people I came into contact with were not. It made a barrier. What they wanted to talk about were things they had eaten, touched, or done. What I wanted to talk about was what I had read.
Frederik Pohl
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
I've always loved joining clubs--although, in truth, they're usually book clubs." ~Robecca Steam
Gitty Daneshvari
[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
Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Filmmaker John Waters has said, “Nothing is more important than an unread library.
Austin Kleon
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