Quotes by American Authors - Page 157

Inspiration never arrived when you were searching for it.
Lisa Alther
A sure way to lose happiness I found is to want it at the expense of everything else.
Bette Davis
I don't sit around thinking that I'd like to have another husband only another man would make me think that way.
Lauren Bacall
Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.
Rose Wilder Lane
Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is always beyond our grasp but if you will sit down quietly may alight upon you.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
People see God every day they just don't recognize Him.
Pearl Bailey
You have much more power when you are working for the right thing than when you are working for the wrong thing.
Peace Pilgrim
There is no other solution to man's progress but the day's honest work the day's honest decisions the day's generous utterances and the day's good deed.
Clare Boothe Luce
I think the inner person is the most important. ... I would like to see an invention that keeps the mind alert. That's what is important.
Julia Child
It's what you do that makes your soul not the other way around.
Barbara Kingsolver
Most true happiness comes from one's inner life from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly a good inner life is difficult to achieve especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline.
W. L. Shirer
Seek not outside yourself heaven is within.
Mary Lou Cook
What you become is what counts.
Liz Smith
When you're in your nineties and looking back it's not going to be how much money you made or how many awards you've won. It's really what did you stand for. Did you make a positive difference for people?
Elizabeth Dole
Joy is the feeling of grinning on the inside.
Dr. Melba Colgrove
Accept the pain cherish the joys resolve the regrets then can come the best of benedictions-"If I had my life to live over I'd do it all the same."
Joan Mcintosh
To live and let live without clamor for distinction or recognition to wait on divine Love to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart-this is the sanity and perfection of living and my human ideal.
Mary Baker Eddy
Practice easing your way along. Don't get het up or in a dither. Do your best take it as it comes. You can handle anything if you think you can. Just keep your cool and your sense of humor.
Smiley Blanton
The attributes of a great lady may still be found in the rule of the four S's: Sincerity Simplicity Sympathy and Serenity.
Emily Post
To live content with small means to seek elegance rather than luxury and refinement rather than fashion to be worthy not respectable and wealthy not rich to study hard think quietly talk gently act frankly to listen to the stars and birds to babes and sages with open heart to bear on cheerfully do all bravely awaiting occasions worry never in a word to like the spiritual unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common.
William Ellery Channing
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
Agnes Repplier
The secret of staying young is to live honestly eat slowly and lie about your age.
Lucille Ball
To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars to be satisfied with your possessions but not contented with yourself until you have made the best of them to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness and to fear nothing except cowardice to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts to covet nothing that is your neighbor's except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners to think seldom of your enemies often of your friends and every day of Christ and to spend as much time as you can with body and with spirit in God's out-of-doors- these are little guideposts on the footpath to peace.
Henry Van Dyke
Five great enemies to peace inhabit us: avarice ambition envy anger and pride. If those enemies were to be banished we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us but is always the result of a good conscience good health occupation and freedom in all just pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson
Work and love-these are the basics. Without them there is neurosis.
Theodor Reik
To make a man happy fill his hands with work his heart with affection his mind with purpose his memory with useful knowledge his future with hope and his stomach with food.
Frederick E. Crane
From birth to age eighteen a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on she needs good cash.
Sophie Tucker
There are three ingredients in the good life: learning earning and yearning.
Christopher Morley
To do the useful thing to say the courageous thing to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
T.S Eliot
Have a variety of interests. ... These interests relax the mind and lessen tension on the nervous system. People with many interests live not only longest but happiest.
George Matthew Allen
Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: "A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work and the ability to love others."
Eleanor Roosevelt
Being happy is something you have to learn. I often surprise myself by saying "Wow this is it. I guess I'm happy. I've got a home that I love. A career that I love. I'm even feeling more and more at peace with myself." If there's something else to happiness let me know. I'm ambitious for that too.
Harrison Ford
Like swimming riding writing or playing golf happiness can be learned.
Dr. Boris Sokoloff
There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that you ain't learned nothing.
Lorraine Hansbury
Good friends good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain
Life is a romantic business but you have to make the romance.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
I'm happier. ... I guess I made up my mind to be that way.
Merle Haggard
Discontent is want of self-reliance it is infirmity of will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
The U.S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness only the pursuit of it. Your have to catch up with it yourself.
Benjamin Franklin
The test of enjoyment is the remembrance which it leaves behind.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Don't mistake pleasures for happiness. They are a different breed of dog.
Josh Billings
Real happiness is cheap enough yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
Hosea Ballou
Beauty is a radiance that originates from within and comes from inner security and strong character.
Jane Seymour
Taking joy in life is a woman's best cosmetic.
Rosalind Russell
Love is a great beautifier.
Louisa May Alcott
Happiness to some is elation to others it is mere stagnation.
Amy Lowell
I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.
Louise Erdrich
Infatuation is when you think that he's as sexy as Robert Redford as smart as Henry Kissinger as noble as Ralph Nader as funny as Woody Allen and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen as smart as Jimmy Conners as funny as Ralph Nader as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford-but you'll take him anyway.
Judith Viorst
From the moment we walk out the door until we come back home our sensibilities are so assaulted by the world that we have to soak up as much love as we can get simply to arm ourselves.
Patty Duke
Our society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else's feelings and yet be very respectable.
Ntozake Shange
Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible-it cannot be seen or measured yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment and offer you more joy than any material possession could.
Barbara De Angelis
To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
Karen Sunde
The cure for all ills and wrongs the cares the sorrows and the crimes of humanity all lie in the one word 'love.' It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.
Lydia M. Child
Where there is great love there are always wishes.
Willa Cather
When you come right down to it the secret of having it all is loving it all.
Dr. Joyce Brothers
We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.
Agnes Repplier
What a richly colored strong warm coat is woven when love is the warp and work is the woof.
Marge Piercy