Quotes by American Authors - Page 188

There are trees that seem to die at the end of autumn. There are also the evergreens.
Gilbert Maxwell
No winter lasts forever no spring skips its turn.
Hal Borland
Life comes in clusters clusters of solitude then clusters when there is hardly time to breathe.
May Sarton
I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once when I was number one on the bestseller list I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes.
Jacqueline Briskin
We do not live an equal life but one of contrasts and patchwork now a little joy then a sorrow now a sin then a generous or brave action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The one law that does not change is that everything changes and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.
Louis L'Amour
Some days you tame the tiger. And some days the tiger has you for lunch.
Tug McGraw
Thy fate is the common fate of all Into each life some rain must fall Some days must be dark and dreary.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Everyone gets their rough day. No one gets a free ride. Today so far I had a good day. I got a dial tone.
Rodney Dangerfield
Every man meets his Waterloo at last.
Wendell Phillips
Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
Walter Colton
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Thomas Jefferson
It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.
Benjamin Franklin
While democracy must have its organization and controls its vital breath is individual liberty.
Charles Evans Hughes
I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.
Woodrow Wilson
All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
Alfred E. Smith
Democracy means not "I am as good as you are " but "You are as good as I am."
Theodore Parker
Democracy is the government of the people by the people for the people.
Abraham Lincoln
The world must be made safe for democracy.
Woodrow Wilson
It would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it they pay the penalty but compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant.
Calvin Coolidge
As I would not be a slave so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Abraham Lincoln
What men value in the world is not rights but privileges.
H.L. Mencken
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
E B White
The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
Bernard Baruch
People often say that in a democracy decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.
Walter H. Judd
Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.
James Bryant Conant
If you want to understand democracy spend less time in the library with Plato and more time in the buses with people.
Simeon Strunsky
Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity as well as the inalienable right to govern himself with reason and justice.
Harry S. Truman
In a democracy the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is indispensable.
Walter Lippmann
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
What is defeat? Nothing but education nothing but the first step toward something better.
Wendell Phillips
I let the American people down and I have to carry that burden for the rest of my life. My political life is over. I will never again have an opportunity to serve in any official position. Maybe I can give a little advice from time to time.
Richard Nixon
We have fought this fight as long and as well as we know how. We have been defeated. For us as a Christian people there is now but one course to pursue. We must accept the situation.
Robert E. Lee
Do not be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.
Henry Ward Beecher
Little deeds of kindness little words of love Make our earth an Eden like the heaven above.
Julia F. Carney
The last if not the greatest of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstance.
Bruno Bettelheim
Once a decision was made I did not worry about it afterward.
Harry S. Truman
A wiser rule would be to make up your mind soberly what you want peace or war and then to get ready for what you want for what we prepare for is what we shall get.
William Graham Sumner
There is one quality more important than know-how.... This is know-how by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes but what our purposes are to be.
Norbert Weiner
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide ... And the choice goes by forever t'wixt that darkness and that light.
James Russell Lowell
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
Agnes De Mille
No question is ever settled until it is settled right.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
After a battle is over people talk a lot about how decisions were methodically reached but actually there's always a hell of a lot of groping around.
Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.
Henry Kissinger
There is a time when we must firmly choose the course we will follow or the relentless drift of events will make the decision for us.
Herbert B. Prochnow
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James
Not to decide is to decide.
Harvey Cox
When you have to make a choice and don't make it that is in itself a choice.
William James
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please-you can never have both.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of two evils choose the prettier.
Carolyn Wells
I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.
Katharine Butler Hathaway
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton
When confronted with two courses of action I jot down on a piece of paper all the arguments in favor of each one then on the opposite side I write the arguments against each one. Then by weighing the arguments pro and con and cancelling them out one against the other I take the course indicated by what remains.
Benjamin Franklin
Here's a rule I recommend. Never practice two vices at once.
Tallulah Bankhead
If decisions were a choice between alternatives decisions would come easy. Decision is the selection and formulation of alternatives.
Kenneth Burke
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
Henry Kissinger
The more one does and sees and feels the more one is able to do and the more genuine may be one's own appreciation of fundamental things like home and love and understanding companionship.
Amelia Earhart
Alternatives and particularly desirable alternatives grow only on imaginary trees.
Saul Bellow
There comes a time when you've got to say "Let's get off our asses and go ..." I have always found that if I move with 75 percent or more of the facts I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.
Lee Iacocca
The moment a question comes to your mind see yourself mentally taking hold of it and disposing of it. In that moment... you learn to become the decider and not the vacillator. Thus you build character.
H. Van Anderson