Quotes by American Authors - Page 24

To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one's own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one's own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Even if surviving wasn't simple, or easy, or fair.Even if he could never be human.He wanted the chance to matter.He wanted to live.
Victoria Schwab
As we drew nearer the green shore the bearded man told me of that land, the Land of Zar, where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten. And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that what he said was true, for among the sights before me were many things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in the phosphorescent depths of the ocean.
H.P. Lovecraft
That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, 'Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It's just fun to think about.' And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it--have slaves fight each other to death in the Colosseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in industrial quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and on.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. There are moments when his cogitations are relatively more respectable than usual, but even at their climaxes they never reach anything properly describable as the level of serious thought. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before and by thousands.
H.L. Mencken
Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress.Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought.Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Forget bringing the troops home from Iraq. We need to get the troops home from World War II. Can anybody tell me why, in 2009, we still have more than sixty thousand troops in Germany and thirty thousand in Japan? At some point, these people are going to have to learn to rape themselves. Our soldiers have been in Germany so long they now wear shorts with black socks. You know that crazy soldier hiding in the cave on Iwo Jima who doesn’t know the war is over? That’s us.Bush and Cheney used to love to keep Americans all sphinctered-up on the notion that terrorists might follow us home. But actually, we’re the people who go to your home and then never leave. Here’s the facts: The Republic of America has more than five hundred thousand military personnel deployed on more than seven hundred bases, with troops in one hundred fifty countries—we’re like McDonald’s with tanks—including thirty-seven European countries—because you never know when Portugal might invade Euro Disney. And this doesn’t even count our secret torture prisons, which are all over the place, but you never really see them until someone brings you there—kinda like IHOP.Of course, Americans would never stand for this in reverse—we can barely stand letting Mexicans in to do the landscaping. Can you imagine if there were twenty thousand armed Guatemalans on a base in San Ber-nardino right now? Lou Dobbs would become a suicide bomber.And why? How did this country get stuck with an empire? I’m not saying we’re Rome. Rome had good infrastructure. But we are an empire, and the reason is because once America lands in a country, there is no exit strategy. We’re like cellulite, herpes, and Irish relatives: We are not going anywhere. We love you long time!
Bill Maher
Then, one sunny September morning, the illusion of a personal God that I tried so hard to believe in, exploded over the skies of Manhattan. Even as the ashes and ruin of this horrific act of blind faith settled over New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, I watched people across the country scrambling to that same irrational altar for their answers. In the fierce storm of emotion that rolled across this country, one realization rose to the surface of my mind with blinding clarity: certainly this mechanism of unassailable blind faith is one of the greatest risks mankind faces today.
Nathan Phelps
In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor.
Tim O'Brien
I would say Pittsburgh softly each time before throwing him up. Whisper Pittsburgh with my mouth against the tiny ear and throw him higher. Pittsburgh and happiness high up. The only way to leave even the smallest trace. So that all his life her son would feel gladness unaccountably when anyone spoke of the ruined city of steel in America. Each time almost remembering something maybe important that got lost.
Jack Gilbert
Only in America can you be pro-death penalty, pro-war, pro-unmanned drone bombs, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-guns, pro-torture, pro-land mines, and still call yourself 'pro-life.
John Fugelsang
But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved.
John Marshall Harlan
The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen. Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. [Chomsky in an interview with Chris Hedges in 2010]
Chomsky Noam
I was beginning to feel that there would never be another American uprising, that the energy was gone, and I have some reasons to think that might be true. I like to point out that the crime rate in America has been declining for a long time, and in my opinion it’s because Americans don’t even have enough gumption to commit crimes anymore: the creative aspect of crime has fallen into decay. As for the uprising that takes a principled stand against violence, hats off to them, I admire the idealism, but I don’t think it’s going to accomplish much.
Hakim Bey
Call me a proud American, if you want, but I truly believe that no other nation on Earth possesses the capabilities to put on a more powerful display of underwater mermaid patriotism.
Dave Barry
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire, I And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens, I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth. Qut of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother. You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic. But for my children. I would have them keep their dis-tance from the thickening center; corruption.Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left the mountajns. And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master. There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught -–they say--God, when he walked on earth.
Robinson Jeffers
These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
It’s like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of shit is that, but white people’s shit?
Miles Davis
My feelings for Drew couldn't just disappear. They were ingrained within every fiber of my being, and I needed them just the same as I needed air to breathe.
Michelle Madow
My Love wakes in a puddle of sunlight.Her hands asleep beside her.Her hair draped on the lawnlike a mantle of cloth.I give her my lifefor our love is wholeI sing her beauty in my soul.
Roman Payne
You will be my souvenir in American summer,when all I can think about are Parisian springs.
Lori Jenessa Nelson
I was getting what I had always wanted, him wanting me.
C.J. English
I wanted to know what it felt like to be loved by the man of my dreams.
C.J. English
People who love do the impossible all the time.
Germaine Shames
Promises from Lo are like bars at 2 a.m.--empty.
Krista Ritchie
The propensity to say and do dumb things, and even wicked things, is simply part of human nature. One can blame the Church or Christianity for such things only on the thoroughly unwarranted assumption that Christianity claims to have abolished human nature. The truth is that Christianity, and the Catholic Church in particular, is the mother of Western civilization, with all it strengths and weaknesses, including its frequently exaggerated penchant for self-criticism. Like others who know what it is to be a mother, she is not surprised, although sometimes disappointed, when she is blamed for everything and thanked for nothing.
Richard John Neuhaus
You can get to oppression through regulation, especially in an "Idea Economy" which necessitates liberty of the mind to explore.
A.E. Samaan
The sadist desires to command and control. The masochist desires to be freed from the burdens of liberty. That is Socialism.
A.E. Samaan
Some that read this book will find its Libertarian and Constitutionalist slant a bit obtuse and maybe even off-putting. This author makes no apologies for viewing the history of the eugenics movement from this political perspective. It is the ethical and legal underpinnings of the American Revolution that remain as a guiding light while the eugenics movement continues to reemerge long after its alleged demise. Limited, or rather minimal government, goes a long way to curtail the disconnect that emerges when government grows so large that it no longer feels compelled to heed to the dictates of the governed.
A.E. Samaan
Some capitalism suffers from cronyism. All of socialism is perverted by the crony statism of the powerful few.
A.E. Samaan
The "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" begins with "life", and "life" begins at conception.
A.E. Samaan
FUCK "UNITY"!! What a pathetic way of thinking. How arrogant of Progressives to think that my hopes and dreams mirror their hopes and dreams. What an absolute bore.... what an total lack of originality or individuality... I believe in individual liberty. I am an extremist on the topic of individual liberty, precisely because I value original thinking and original accomplishments. Fuck unity of purpose. Fuck collectivism. My life is not your life. I have my own path. Get out of my way.
A.E. Samaan
It's remarkable the logic we'll build around a misapprehension.
Sloane Crosley
The older I get the more I enjoy my childhood…! ~James A. Murphy
James A. Murphy
Eventually, however, the denial turned into emptiness and my childhood ended.
Floyd C. Forsberg
He considered himself, and the way he moved in reaction, like a pinball, from one thing to the next, as he was told, as was expected, as made the least friction, and he knew this was the lazy behavior of a scared boy.
Laleh Khadivi
This is a feeling that you had, Quentin, she said. Once, a very long time ago. A rare one. This is how you felt when you were eight years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first time, and you felt awe and joy and hope and longing all at once. You felt them very strongly, Quentin. You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many people ever experience. That's where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.
Lev Grossman
We are candles, I remember thinking, and the wind is rising.
Lynn Schooler
You are educated when you learn to coexist with othersAnd as a result you enhance the whole existence.
Debasish Mridha
Why are we here? Is there, really, some intelligent design? Why do we cry for someone who leaves us, if there's some Grand Pearly Gate in the sky? Why worry about how we build our lives if the ultimate ending for all is death, a single breath away?
Ellen Hopkins
Yes, yes, yes, he felt uncontrollable tenderness for his own shit-filled life. And a laughable hunger for more. More defeat! More disappointment! More deceit! More loneliness! More arthritis! More missionaries! God willing, more cunt! More disastrous entanglement in everything. For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.
Philip Roth
In the vast spectrum of space-time’s coeternal continuum, I am but a glint of bundled energy held together by the translucent fiber of creative consciousness. The misty dew of private thoughts that inhabit my streaky underworld briefly forms a splintery part of the glittering arena of the cosmos. In the ether-like dawn of my awakening, my minuscule arch appears intravenously injected amid the dark matter of the nightscape. Reminiscent of the morning’s dew, my comet’s tailed reflection disintegrates and dissipates without a lasting trace in the dawn of a new age. I shall never wholly cease to exist, since my filtrate potentiality – a trace of my essence – remains suspended forevermore in celestial wonderment.
Kilroy J. Oldster
It is natural that people should differ most, and most violently, about the unknowable . . . There is all the room in the world for divergence of opinion about something that, so far as we can realistically perceive, does not exist.
E. Haldeman-Julius
How does one go on after doing such unspeakable things? It'sall rather simple, really," he continued, speaking in someone else's voice. "Say to yourself, 'What things?' And it becomes clear...you are blameless. They brought it on themselves. What have they ever done for you except control your life? They tore you away from your sister; they ripped you from your home. Did you ask to be saved? No! Forget them and start over...with us, your true family, my Corcitura, my own.
Melika Dannese Lux
I come from a long line of body snatchers, probably the top-notch body snatchers in America. No make that the world. Some people might think it's gross digging up bones or corpses, but who asked them? It's no big deal, but then I've been doing it since I got out of diapers.
Minda Webber
Okay, okay, okay … go to your corners, boys. This is a nice Aubusson carpet you’re standing on. You get blood on it and I’ll have Fritz so far up my ass I’ll be coughing on his hankie.
J.R. Ward
Check the top 1000 books on Amazon. Most of them have a shirtless guy on the cover, because they're smutty "romance novels" (read: porn for women) about a girl being swept off her feet by one (or more) billionaire alpha-males. There are literally tens of thousands of books out there about shirtless billionaire alpha-male vampires who can't wait to mate with you. Lucky you! And women eat that shit up! Men, not so much. Men prefer to watch actual porn.
Oliver Markus
Look, I’ll tell you what I do, but you won’t believe me.” …t“Given that I just found you bound and gagged, my mind is somewhat more receptive than it might normally be.”t“Well then, here’s the deal,” Krystal said as she sat down next to me. “Everything you think you know about monsters is a lie. Ghouls, ghosts, werewolves and more are real and hiding out behind the scenes in our world. Officially, they are known as parahumans.
Drew Hayes
I've just been bitten on the neck by a vampire... mosquito. Does that mean that when the night comes I will rise and be annoying?
Vera Nazarian
I have diligently disciplined my life to search out life’s gifts in the very places where society mistakenly says life stores its scraps. And I am constantly amazed that in the treasure trove that surrounds me, I stand in the company of so few.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The analytical geometry of Descartes and the calculus of Newton and Leibniz have expanded into the marvelous mathematical method—more daring than anything that the history of philosophy records—of Lobachevsky and Riemann, Gauss and Sylvester. Indeed, mathematics, the indispensable tool of the sciences, defying the senses to follow its splendid flights, is demonstrating today, as it never has been demonstrated before, the supremacy of the pure reason.
Nicholas Murray Butler
Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do something, when all they need is one reason why they can.
Willis R. Whitney
Are you going to give me a reason to stay?
Elle Cosimano
It is terrifying,” said Adrian. “And weird, for lack of a better word. And part of you knows… well, part of you knows something’s not right. That your thinking’s not right. But what do you about that? All we can go on is what we think, how we see the world. If you can’t trust your own mind, what can you trust? What other people tell you?
Richelle Mead
Love is knowing someone so deeply, understanding her so completely, that you can finish her thoughts without hesitation, confident in reading her face, her body, even her slightest gesture means something to you.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Last night I danced. My body rose from its slump for the first time since the beginning of sorrows—my fingers beckoning to the stars at arm's length, back arching as tingles bubbled up my spine, hips caught in a silent tempo while on tiptoe I twirled in endless euphoric circles. It didn't matter that you loved me or that you didn't. For I was wanted by the gods last night, their seraphs and muses descending on moonbeams into my midst, caressing my face and gliding their spirited arms about my waist, lifting my toes from the soil that I might feel what it is to fly without heaviness of heart. I danced with them under the glow of a loyal moon. For one brief, visceral dance I joyed as Heaven joys—in endless bliss.And the universe cherished me.
Richelle E. Goodrich
There's enchantment in a smile, did you know?Shall I prove in a wink that it is so?Watch my mouth grin wide and see,How quick your lips smile back at me!
Richelle E. Goodrich
Frozen yogurt is tastier than ice cream; nobody is too old for cartoons; bald men are sexy; chocolate is the best medicine; BIG books are better; cats secretly rule the planet; and everything should be available in the color pink, including monster trucks.
Richelle E. Goodrich
The watchful Mishmorat commented while waiting, contemplating Eena’s bare back. “Your people are so plain and pale.”“Oh?” Eena kinked her neck to look at Niki, zeroing in on her long spotted arms. Her bronze skin was arguably more striking—speckled in beautiful patterns.“I’m sorry,” the Mishmorat quickly apologized. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’ve never seen such bare skin before. There’s nothing to look at.”Eena quickly pulled the new t-shirt down over her back. She chuckled at Niki’s comment. “I’ll admit your people are very attractive. But I’m okay with my ‘plainness.’” She glanced over her pale legs before pulling on a clean pair of pants. “You’re kinda like a clear, cloudless sky,” Niki said, cocking her head wonderingly.“And you’re like a…..a sky dotted with shapely clouds.”“Only dark clouds.”“Storm clouds.”“Yeah,” Niki grinned devilishly, “That’s me—a sky full of storm clouds.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Time is an imp—a pesky, little, hellish troll that hastens the clock when I smile but then delays the passing of minutes when I frown.
Richelle E. Goodrich