Quotes by American Authors - Page 252

You can tell a really wonderful quote by the fact that it's attributed to a whole raft of wits.
Anna Quindlen
The problem is you make the tricks look good. You are a brilliant acrobat, and a witty comedian. You are skillful. People want a fool to be foolish--trip on banana peels and grin and spout nonsense. These men want fools to make them feel better about themselves, not to remind them what they lack.
Kelli Swofford Nielsen
Half is better than none unless it be of a wit.
Susan Lendroth
Wit makes its own welcome and levels all distinctions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Look, this is helping me out quite a bit, but could you just get to the punishment part? We're at the end of World War Two in history, and I can't wait to find out who wins.
Rob Thomas
Well, I can throw a mean comeback, so there's that. I will crush them on wit.
Rachel Caine
This lot won't suffer you forever.I wouldn't see you dead by their knives; I see a fine man within you Wit.""Yes, He tasted quite delicious.
Brandon Sanderson
I’ll admit, Jasnah, that I empathize with your skepticism, but I don’t agree with it. I just think you've been looking for God in the wrong plac
Brandon Sanderson
Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty.
Brandon Sanderson
Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.
Paul Newman
When she walked by the two officers, they didn't recognize her. "Have you seen the luscious bonbon with the golden braids?" She grinned up at them with such impish mischief that they almost forgot their quest for the singer. "She is with her lover," Hannah said. "But she can always handle one or two more." She winked at them. "Go there, through that door." She made her escape while the uniformed hobbledehoys gawked and gaped and finally burst into the dressing room where Franz, the three-hundred-pound juggling strongman, was adjusting his loincloth. "I ought not do it," Hannah said aloud to herself as chaos erupted behind her. "I just can't seem to help myself. it is a shame, really.
Laura L. Sullivan
I wish for you the wisdom to mind your own business.
Steve Maraboli
Both were military. That was clear.Reacher could tell by their haircuts. No civilian barber would be as pragmatic or as brutal.
Lee Child
you ask too many questions," snapped Cletus.I kept my gaze on Roman. "that's because I get too few answers.
David Baldacci
I suppose we all tend to want the impossible. And sometimes in attempting it we achieve something near enough to the impossible to elicit satisfaction.
Julie Anne Long
This is a lot more satisfying," he said, "when I have intelligent life whom I can render awed, rapt with attention for my clever verbosity."The ugly lizard-crab-thing on the next rock over clicked its claw, an almost hesitant sound."Your right, of course," Wit said. "My usual audience isn't particularly intelligent. That was also the obvious joke, however, so shame on you.
Brandon Sanderson
Does the king know you're back?""Nope! I'm trying to think of a properly dramatic way to inform him. Perhaps a hundred chasmfiends marching in unison, singing an ode to my magnificence.""That sounds… hard.""Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation.""I have no idea what you just said.""Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation.
Brandon Sanderson
if you can’t acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.
Lee Child
I’m not a serpent, Father. I’m a crow.
Eli Easton
In retrospect, I am very nearly as sharp as I pretend to be.
Lyndsay Faye
That's a very murky position," objected Felix."So's the weather. But this is England, we must learn to live with uncertainty.
Gail Carriger
I wonder now how we got by when you weren't here.""I have no doubt the devastation was widespread, the suffering universal.""Indeed, it was the Dark Ages in the annals of Mrs. Dawlish's house. Ignorance was thick on the ground, and unenlkghtenment befogged all the windows.
Sherry Thomas
A palindrome,” I said the first time she told me. She looked at me, perplexed, and that’s when I knew I could never love her. What a waste of a palindrome she was, that Hannah.-Owen Gentry
Colleen Hoover
I hope to return. I’ll do so if I’m not killed. Probably will anyway.
Brandon Sanderson
Her face collapsed like a bad poem
Marge Simon
Happy hour?" Jason says. "It's barely noon, Grams""Oh, shush, you. You'll have some, yes?'"Well"-he smiles slyly and wiggles his eyebrows-"if you insist". Every time, it's the same thing. Leaning in, he rubs his hands together expectantly. The drinking age in New York State was raised last year, so technically, I suppose, this is still illegal for my grandson. But the Jews didn't spend forty years wandering the desert so that I could forfeit a gin and tonic with my progeny...
Susan Jane Gilman
Snark is a fabulous defense mechanism.
Betsy Schow
Always remember that you have been called worse things by better people.
Shannon L. Alder
Always remember that you can explain things for people, but you can't comphrend for them.
Shannon L. Alder
A fool is a man who believes glory can be found at the tip of a sword instead of on the tip of his tongue. That is life’s cruel trick.
Natalia Jaster
Only one English word adequately describes his transformation of the islands from worthless to priceless: magical.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
You would wind up as a cat, I told her. They don't need anyone else. I need you, she replied.Well, I said. Maybe I'll come back as catnip.
Jodi Picoult
Captain Billings," he drawled finally, "if you will pardon my candor, I might remark that you are something of an ass, don't you know.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Charisma is the ability to influence without logic.
Quentin Crisp
For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle.
Ernest Hemingway
Hey, have you heard that one about the difference between me, Wit, and my loutish cousin, Hilarity? No? Okay, so I walk into a bar, you see, very unassuming, and order a martini. Then the bartender, Hilarity, hauls off and squirts me in the face with a seltzer bottle, ruining my n ice new camel hair suit, dousing my monocle and my watch fob, soaking my cravat. So, do I let him have what for, and blow my top? I do not. I simply say:Sorry, I believe I said 'very dry'.
Chip Kidd
Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.
Christopher Moore
I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At least they were getting paid. I was working forty feet above the ground, breathing in sulfur fumes from Satan's vomitorium, for
Laurie Halse Anderson
Big words from a guy who's trussed up like a turkey. What are you going to do, wobble over here like an upside- down turtle to snap me in half?""The logistics of breaking you are easy. The only question is when.
Susan Ee
Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.
Franny Billingsley
One can have a wit, but not a witless
Brandon Sanderson
Writing a book is like sliding down a rainbow! Marketing it is like trudging through a field of chewed bubblegum on a hot, sticky day.
Betty Dravis
Let me be clear. Last I was aware you were neither my husband nor my father nor my King. Therefore, any control you may imagine you hold over me is just that- imaginary
Sarah MacLean
Men are not nearly as evolved as women are, nor as intelligent, evidently
Sarah MacLean
On some days you get what you want, and on others, you get what you need.
Hunter S. Thompson
Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Abraham Lincoln
Coming into a realization that there is purpose in why God has given all of us the gift of life- To promote the cause of Christ and God's Kingdom in a creative manner that expresses our uniqueness.
R. Alan Woods
If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?
Elie Wiesel
Too many people think that finding the reason God placed us here on earth will come in one assignment with a big title and complete job description. I believe that discovering our purpose will unfold slowly, like a seed planted deep in the ground.
Lysa TerKeurst
What the world thought made little difference. Rembrandt had topaint. Whether he painted well or badly didn't matter; painting was thestuff that held him together as a man. The chief value of art, Vincent, liesin the expression it gives to the artist. Rembrandt fulfilled what he knewto be his life purpose; that justified him. Even if his work had beenworthless, he would have been a thousand times more successful than ifhe had put down his desire and become the richest merchant inAmsterdam. (Mendes Da Costa
Irving Stone
Our ultimate purpose in life lies in selfless service to others. Selflessly giving of ourselves to our spouses, our children, our friends, our community, our employers and or our customers unlocks a treasure chest of priceless gifts for both the recipient and you. Let's go the extra mile, in all we do, this week and see what riches we can discover. ~Jason Versey
Jason Versey
Because any fool knows that to work hard at something you want to accomplish is the only way to be happy. But beyond that it is entirely up to you. You’ve got to do for yourself all the seeking and finding concerned with what you want to do. Anyone but yourself is useless to you there.
Eugene O'Neill
Don't you feel that at this rate there isn't much in it? In what? In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it? Take a day like this: you waken up in the morning and you're glad to be alive; it's a good enough day for anything, and you feel sure something will happen. Well, whether it's a workday or a holiday, it's all the same in the end. At night you go to bed - nothing has happened.
Willa Cather
When in brief flashes of serendipity you glimpse what you were born to do... Do it. No matter what. Take steps toward it, even if they are depressingly small at first. With each inch closer to your central magic, you will feel it. It is unmistakable for anything else. It's called purpose.
Jacob Nordby
One person can make a difference, and every person should try.
Thomas E. Cronin
They say, find a purpose in life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind. And now that I had fulfilled mine, I felt aimless and adrift
Khaled Hosseini
It wasn't hard going to the gym, as long as he went as soon as he woke up, before he had time to think about not going. Those morning workouts made him feel like he was starting his day like a pinball, with a giant shot of momentum. The feeling sometimes didn’t wear off until six or seven at night (when it was usually overtaken by the feeling that he was just bouncing haplessly from one situation to the next without any real purpose or direction).
Rainbow Rowell
There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn’t much. These mill towns with their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The other reason I didn’t want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn’t one of the people, nor would I ever be. I had a vision for my life. It wasn’t clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty behind me. I wasn’t happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn’t worry about it. It didn’t define me. We’re always in the making. God always has us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose. It was time to change, to find a new purpose.
John William Tuohy
When we see marriage as our sole purpose, we find ourselves with nowhere to go when we finally arrive.
Debra Fileta
The point is, there is no point. Choose your own!
Ann Leckie