Quotes by American Authors - Page 182

A life of reaction is a life of slavery intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action not reaction.
Rita Mae Brown
There are more serious problems in life than financial ones and I've had a lot of those. I've been broke before and will be again. Heartbroke? That's serious. Lose a few bucks? That's not.
Willie Nelson
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
William Saroyan
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
Carol Burnett
Humor is an attitude. It's a way of looking at life and of telling others how you feel about what's happening around you.
Gene Perret
Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.
Harry S. Truman
Were it not for my little jokes I could not bear the burdens of this office.
Abraham Lincoln
A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference ... it pardons shortcomings it consoles failure. It recommends moderation.
Thornton Wilder
A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs jolted by every pebble in the road.
Henry Ward Beecher
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks
If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it you might as well laugh about it now.
Marie Osmond
Wrinkles should only indicate where smiles have been.
Ethel Barrymore
Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
Max Eastman
A sense of humor can help you overlook the unattractive tolerate the unpleasant cope with the unexpected and smile through the unbearable.
Moshe Waldoks
Humor brings insight and tolerance.
Agnes Repplier
A chuckle a day may not keep the doctor away but it sure does make those times in life's waiting room a little more bearable.
Anne Wilson Schaef
Laughter can be more satisfying than honor more precious than money more heart-cleansing than prayer.
Harriet Rochlin
Keep your sense of humor. There's enough stress in the rest of your life to let bad shots ruin a game you're supposed to enjoy.
Amy Alcott
I think laughter may be a form of courage.... As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.
Linda Ellerbee
There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.
Thomas W. Higginson
Learn to laugh at your troubles and you'll never run out of things to laugh at.
Lyn Karol
Humor is an antidote to isolation.
Elizabeth Janeway
True luck consists not in holding the best cards at the table luckiest he who knows just when to rise and go home.
John Hay
All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.
James A. Michener
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you do hold well.
Josh Billings
You gotta play the hand that's dealt you. There may be pain in that hand but you play it.
James Brady
Find the grain of truth in criticism - chew it and swallow it.
Don Sutton
To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is to be unafraid.
John Cage
Courage is a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger and a mental willingness to endure it.
General William T. Sherman
Courage in the final analysis is nothing but an affirmative answer to the shocks of existence.
Dr. Kurt Goldstein
The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Groan and forget it.
Jessamyn West
One cannot get through life without pain.... What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.
Bernie S. Siegel
When fate hands you a lemon make lemonade.
Dale Carnegie
If you are being run out of town get in front of the crowd and make it look like a parade.
Sally Stanford
When all that hate energy was focused on me it was transformed into a fantastic energy. It was supporting me. If you are centered and you can transform all this energy that comes in it will help you. If you believe it is going to kill you it will kill you.
Yoko Ono
All that is necessary is to accept the impossible do without the indispensable and bear the intolerable.
Kathleen Norris
What you can't get out of get into wholeheartedly.
Mignon McLaughlin
I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything but dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest.
Florynce Kennedy
We must make the best of those ills which cannot be avoided.
Alexander Hamilton
Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.
Ellen Glasgow
Boys this is only a game. But it's like life in that you will be dealt some bad hands. Take each hand good or bad and don't whine and complain but play it out. If you're men enough to do that God will help you and you will come out well.
Ida Eisenhower
It seems that we learn lessons when we least expect them but always when we need them the most and the true "gift" in these lessons always lies in the learning process itself.
Cathy Lee Crosby
I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.
Sara Teasdale
No emotional crisis is wholly the product of outward circumstances. These may precipitate it. But what turns an objective situation into a subjectively critical one is the interpretation the individual puts upon it - the meaning it has in his emotional economy the way it affects his self-image.
Bonaro Overstreet
The art of life consists in taking each event which befalls us with a contented mind confident of good. ... With this method ... rejoice always though in the midst of sorrows and possess all things though destitute of everything.
James Freeman Clarke
All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest it seems is an interest in life good bad or peculiar.
Grace Paley
When you make a world tolerable for yourself you make a world tolerable for others.
Anaïs Nin
Nothing is so bad that you have to sit down and go crazy.
John Telgen
Tears mess up your makeup.
Julia Child
It is arrogance to expect that life will always be music.... Harmony like a following breeze at sea is the exception. In a world where most things wind up broken or lost our lot is to tack and tune.
Harvey Oxenhorn
We can either change the complexities of life ... or develop ways that enable us to cope more effectively.
Herbert Benson
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
What the caterpillar calls a tragedy the Master calls a butterfly.
Richard Bach
Any man can shoot a gun and with practice he can draw fast and shoot accurately but that makes no difference. What counts is how you stand up when somebody is shooting back at you.
Louis L'Amour
Results? Why man I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison
A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.
Ralph W Sockman
When the going gets tough the tough get going.
Frank Leahy
Concern should drive us into action not into a depression.
Karen Horney
When something bad happens to me I think I'm able to deal with it in a pretty good way. That makes me lucky. Some people fall apart at the first little thing that happens.
Christie Brinkley