Quotes by American Authors - Page 213

The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat men to whom a crises which intimidates and paralyzes the majority comes as graceful and beloved as a bride!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
They sicken of calm who know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man it is what he wants and must have to be good for anything. Hardship and opposition are the native soil of manhood and self-reliance.
John Neal
The thought that we are enduring the unendurable is one of the things that keeps us going.
Molly Haskell
Adversity causes some men to break others to break records.
William A. Ward
Difficulties are meant to rouse not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing
People wish to be settled only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Necessity is the mother of "taking chances."
Mark Twain
Treasure the memories of past misfortunes they constitute our bank of fortitude.
Eric Hoffer
Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some minds seem almost to create themselves springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
Washington Irving
To be thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.
Benjamin Franklin
For me life is a challenge. And it will be a challenge if I live to be a hundred or if I get to be a trillionaire.
Beah Richards
What we want is never simple.
Linda Pastan
I have always been pushed by the negative.... The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.
Tennessee Williams
Whenever there is chaos it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.
Septima Poinsette Clark
A wounded deer leaps the highest.
Emily Dickinson
The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour to the latest generation.
Abraham Lincoln
Be willing to have it so acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
William James
They say a reasonable amount o' fleas is good for a dog - it keeps him from broodin' over bein' a dog mebbe.
Edward Noyes Westcott
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist - it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Josh Billings
I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is six to five against.
Damon Runyon
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
Woodrow Wilson
They sicken of the calm that know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
I've had an unhappy life thank God.
Russell Baker
Too much happens ... Man performs engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
William Faulkner
People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune.
William McFee
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
James Baldwin
I don't deserve this award but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
Jack Benny
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
James Russell Lowell
Trust no future howe'er pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act - act in the living Present! Heart within and God o'erhead.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
He started to sing as he tackled the thing That couldn't be done and he did it.
Edgar A. Guest
I come to the office each morning and stay for long hours doing what has to be done to the best of my ability. And when you've done the best you can you can't do any better. So when I go to sleep I turn everything over to the Lord and forget it.
Harry S. Truman
My life is ... a mystery which I do not attempt to really understand as though 1 were led by the hand in a night where I see nothing but can fully depend on the love and protection of Him who guides me.
Thomas Merton
Wanna fly you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.
Toni Morrison
Much that I sought I could not find much that I found I could not bind much that I bound I could not free much that I freed returned to me.
Lee Wilson Dodd
God tests His real friends more severely than the lukewarm ones.
Katheryn Hulme
If you can't help it don't think about it.
Carmel Myers
Doing what is right isn't the problem it's knowing what is right.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Whate'er we leave to God God does and blesses us.
Henry David Thoreau
I see not a step before me as I tread on another year But I've left the Past in God's keeping the Future His mercy shall clear And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near.
Mary Gardiner Brainard
Letting people be okay without us is how we get to be okay without them.
Merrit Malloy
The worst thing you can do is to try to cling to something that's gone or to recreate it.
Johnette Napolitano
Willfulness must give way to willingness and surrender. Mastery must yield to mystery.
Gerald G. May
Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them and know it but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves.
William Graham Sumner
Life is made up of desires that seem big and vital one minute and little and absurd the next. I guess we get what's best for us in the end.
Alice Caldwell Rice
The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.
John Berry
You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.
Robert Frost
The best direction is the least possible direction.
Joan Manley
Nothing fruitful ever comes when plants are forced to flower in the wrong season.
Bette Bao Lord
No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap.
Carrie Snow
When you learn not to want things so badly life comes to you.
Jessica Lange
Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.
Natalie Goldberg
O golden Silence bid our souls be still and on the foolish fretting of our care lay thy soft touch of healing unaware!
Julia Dorr
A guru might say that spiritual deepening involves a journey toward the unselfconscious living of life as it unfolds rather than toward a willful determination to make it happen.
John Fortunato
Coercive power is the curse of the universe coactive power the enrichment and advancement of every human soul.
Mary Parker Follett
If you can react the same way to winning and losing that's a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life.
Chris Evert
If it is your time love will track you down like a cruise missile.
Lynda Barry
In all human affairs there are efforts and there are results and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result.
James Lane Allen