Quotes by American Authors - Page 275

I run because long after my footprints fade away, maybe I will have inspired a few to reject the easy path, hit the trails, put one foot in front of the other, and come to the same conclusion I did: I run because it always takes me where I want to go.
Dean Karnazes
I want to run. To do what I always do, have always done, for the last five years of my life. Escape, flee into the shadows. But this time, I stand my ground. I'm tired of running.
Marie Lu
You would run much slower if you were dragging something behind you, like a knapsack or a sheriff.
Lemony Snicket
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.
Christopher McDougall
I can’t do nothing for you either, Billy. You know that. None of us can. You got to understand that as soon as a man goes to help somebody, he leaves himself wide open. He has to be cagey, Billy, you should know that as well as anyone. What could I do? I can’t fix your stuttering. I can’t wipe the razorblade scars off your wrists or the cigarette burns off the back of your hands. I can’t give you a new mother. And as far as the nurse riding you like this, rubbing your nose in your weakness till what little dignity you got left is gone and you shrink up to nothing from humiliation, I can’t do anything about that, either.
Ken Kesey
All lived lives of dignity and repression.
Mary Lou Foster Cooper
As she continues to answer questions about her employment, all these words mean little more to her now than I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY, I AM SOPHISTICATED, I AM WORTHY. She attempts the posture of a politician's wife, shoulders held back, dignifIed yet modest.
Tania James
Perhaps we just need little reminders from time to time that we are already dignified, deserving, worthy. Sometimes we don't feel that way because of the wounds and the scars we carry from the past or because of the uncertainty of the future. It is doubtful that we came to feel undeserving on our own. We were helped to feel unworthy. We were taught it in a thousand ways when we were little, and we learned our lessons well.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
How can anyone love someone who is less than a full person, unless love itself is domination per se?
Andrea Dworkin
Class never runs scared.It is sure-footed and confident.It can handle anything that comes along.Class has a sense of humor.It knows a good laugh is the best lubricant for oiling the machinery of human relations.Class never makes excuses.It takes its lumps and learns from past mistakes.Class knows that good manners are nothing more than a series of small, inconsequential sacrifices.Class bespeaks an aristocracy that has nothing to do with ancestors or money.Some wealthy “blue bloods” have no class, while individuals who are struggling to make ends meet are loaded with it.Class is real.It can’t be faked.Class never tried to build itself by tearing others down.Class is already up and need not strive to look better by making others look worse.Class can “walk with kings and keep it’s virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch.” Everyone is comfortable with the person who has class because that person is comfortable with himself.If you have class, you’ve got it made.If you don’t have class, no matter what else you have, it doesn’t make any difference.
Ann Landers
It’s hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes
John Green
Frank, I ran into Gladys and Billy at the store yesterday. Do you know what he said to me?"The girls went very quiet. Frank didn't look up."Hello?" he asked, and kept rubbing Henry's knife.Dotty hit him with her rag. "He said that. And so did she. But the important part was when he said, 'Frank ever get that door open?' Do you know what I said? What I said was--Are you ready for this? I said, 'No,'""Ah" Frank said. He lifted Henry's knife up to his mouth and dabbed the blade with his tongue. "That's my honest wife. I appreciate you lookin' out for my dignity.
N.D. Wilson
The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.
Dian Fossey
Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itsself
Carolyn Wells
I'm not obliged to defend your dignity. Provided you have any.
Rachel Caine
The women in porn plead to be abused. They call themselves whores and sluts. They are beaten and penetrated by groups of men. Their faces are covered with semen from dozens of masturbating men, their anuses are penetrated repeatedly by lines of partners, and they are raped. The women portrayed in the films exist to fulfill the desire of men in the most degrading and painful way possible. Nearly all porn dialogue includes lines from women such as I am a cunt, I am a bitch. I am a whore. I am a slut.
Chris Hedges
The thing about dignity: it can be destroyed, but not taken unless it's given away. It can always be beautified.
Darnell Lamont Walker
To assert dignity is to lose it.
Rex Stout
It’s a matter of dignity,” the Chief explained. “At a certain point, that’s all you have left.
Tom Perrotta
Do not exchange your dignity for popularity.
Steve Maraboli
On the one hand the younger son realizes that he has lost the dignity of his sonship, but at the same time that sense of lost dignity makes him also aware that he is indeed the son who had dignity to lose," (pp. 49).
Henri J.M. Nouwen
There’s a dignity in consequences.
James S.A. Corey
Remember the son of whom you are because a good name is better than gold or silver
Emmanuel Olawale
You ask me to make a promise? I am in a cage. No promise I make is trustworthy because I would do anything to be rid of this cage. Promise me that you will not treat me like an animal or a spectacle, and I will see what I can do.
J.M. McDermott
It’s always better to sit on your dignity in private than to stand on it in public.
Mark Lawrence
We will not run," Paul said. "We'll move with dignity. We'll do what must be done.
Frank Herbert
It is the lowered head that makes her seem less noble than, say, a horse, or a deer surprised in the woods. More exactly, it is her lowered head and neck. As she stands still, the top of her head is level with her back, or even a little lower, and so she seems to be hanging her head in discouragement, embarrassment, or shame. There is at least a suggestion of humility and dullness about her. But all these suggestions are false.
Lydia Davis
Women of dignity know when to stop expecting loyalty when he won't even give you honesty.
Shannon L. Alder
Shh,” Cobweb said with a well-time jab of the elbow, “we might be able to get some dignity out of this, if we play our cards right.
Lisa Mantchev
Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.
Laura Hillenbrand
There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
Ernest Hemingway
He made a good salary but he did not flaunt it. He’d been raised in Chicago proper by a Lithuanian Jewish mother who had grown up in poverty, telling stories, often, of extending a chicken to its fullest capacity, so as soon as a restaurant served his dish, he would promptly cut it in half and ask for a to-go container. Portions are too big anyway, he’d grumble, patting his waistline. He’d only give away his food if the corners were cleanly cut, as he believed a homeless person would just feel worse eating food with ragged bitemarks at the edges – as if, he said, they are dogs, or bacteria. Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail.
Aimee Bender
Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.
Laura Hillenbrand
Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves.
Dave Eggers
It's hard as hell to hold on to your dignity when the risen sun is too bright in your losing eyes, and that's what I was thinking about as we hunted for bad guys through the ruins of a city that didn't exist.
John Green
What's that?""The laundry basket?""No, next to it.""I don't see anything next to it.""It's my last shred of dignity. It's very small.
John Green
Babies are born without knee-caps.
Reader's Digest Association
Facts are subversive
I.F. Stone
Memorization has gotten a bad rap recently. Lots of students, and even some educators, say that being able to reason is more important than knowing facts; and besides, why bother committing things to memory when you've got Google? My response to this - after I've finished inwardly groaning - is that of course reasoning is important, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know facts as well. It's not like you have to choose between one or the other. Besides, facts give you a foundation on which to reason about things.
Stefanie Weisman
We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year's fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.
Robert G. Ingersoll
The value of an opinion is only measured by its user. It's ironic that the value of a fact is only measured by its observer.
Lionel Suggs
They're called 'facts', and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don't care at all what you think of my motives.
Glenn Greenwald
Life wasn't all fucking sunshine and rainbows. Real life was hard.
Kendall Ryan
Facing facts is definitely preferable to facing defeat.
Gordon R. Dickson
Cosmology is a science which has only a few observable facts to work with.
Robert Woodrow Wilson
But what are facts, really, except things we’ve already proven? There could be lots of almost-facts out there, still waiting for proof.
Kathryn Reiss
Every day that we read the news we have the possibility of being confronted with a fact about our world that is wildly different from what we thought we knew.
Samuel Arbesman
... those selling abortion don't want them to have [the facts]," Virginia said heatedly. "Besides the Supreme Court doesn't agree with you. They judges seem to think we poor women would fall apart if we knew the facts, so they decided women don't have the right to know the full truth." She shook her head. "They've made it legal to withhold vital information, even when a woman requests it, for heaven's sake!
Francine Rivers
The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.
Arnold H. Glasow
But these notes make no pretense of being a record of fact. That isn't their object. They are merely notes of impressions, a record of vagrant thoughts, hopes, ideas that have floated through the mind of one present-day American. It is likely that I have not, and will not, put into them one truth, measuring by the ordinary standards of truth. It is my aim to be true to the essence of things. That's what I'm after.
Sherwood Anderson
Love hurts. There is nothing as painful as heartbreak. But in order to learn to love again, you must learn to trust again.
Nicholas Sparks
Facts which were new to me were daily presenting themselves to my mind.
Noah Webster
The most isolated inhabited island in the world is Tristan da Cunha, an active volcano located in the middle of the south Atlantic Ocean 1,242 miles (2,000 kilometers) from the nearest land. Tristan da Cunha is Portuguese for “Where the fuck are we?!
Cary McNeal
The Japanese island of Okunoshima, also called “Rabbit Island” after the many furry inhabitants who live there, was once home to Japan’s poison gas factories. The rabbits are descendants of ones used for chemical testing during World War II.
Cary McNeal
In the Middle Ages, bloodletting was often performed by barbers, which is why the traditional barber’s pole—like the bloody towels that once hung outside barber shops—is colored red and white.
Cary McNeal
When it comes to scary business, I believe that forewarned is forearmed.
Cary McNeal
At the very best there are two major problems with ideology. The first is that it does not represent or conform to or even address reality. It is a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe. And the second is that it inspires in its believers the notion that the fault here lies with miscreant fact, which should therefore be conformed to the requirements of theory by all means necessary.
Marilynne Robinson
In Japan:The shortage of wives for farmers became a rural crisis. In one village in the late 1980s, of unmarried persons between ages 25 and 39, 120 were men and only 31 were women, a ratio of 4:1. Some Japanese villages organized to find wives for their bachelors. One mountain village placed newspaper ads, promising free winter skiing vacations to all young women who visited and agreed to meet its men. Over a fiveyear period, 300 women responded, but none became wives of a villageman. In another mountain village of 7,000, there were three bachelors for every unmarried woman, so the local government became a marriage agent. It brought in 22 women from the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other Asian countries to marry its men, many in their 40s and 50s. Some marriages endured, but others ended in divorce because of the labor demands of farm life, the burden wives bore in caring for their husband’s elderly parents, and cultural differences. Small businesses developed that offered counseling services for bicultural couples and served as marriage brokers to match Japanese men with foreign women. Even today, many Japanese farm men remain bachelors. Farming in Japan is now primarily a part-time occupation—farmers find off-season jobs in construction or other tasks, unable to make an acceptable living even with government subsidies. And farming is now largely performed by older persons. For example, in one important rice-growing area, between 1980 and 2003, the number of people making most of their money from farming fell by 56 percent, and the number of people between ages 15 and 59 fell by 83 percent. There was one increase, though: there were 600 more farmers older than 70 in 2003 than in 1980.
James Peoples
China uses about half of the world’s cement for its new roads and buildings.According to the World Bank in 2007, China had 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities.One day in January 2013, the air pollution index in Beijing was 755—measured on a scale of 0 to 500!In late 2012, 16,000 dead pigs were found floating in the river that supplies water toShanghai, the PRC’s largest city. For 2010, a ministry of the Chinese government estimated the monetary cost of the environmental damage caused by rapid industrialization at $230 billion, which is 3.5 percent of China’s gross domestic product.Air pollution from Chinese factories wafts over to the Koreas and Japan. Sometimes, upper atmospheric winds carry the sulphur dioxide from China’s coal-burning clear over to North America’s west coast.
James Peoples
The idea of “art for art’s sake” is a recent Western cultural phenomenon that in some ways both distracts and diminishes the reality of human creative expressions. If we define art broadly, then it permeates virtually every aspect of our lives. All of us search for and attempt to create that which is aesthetically pleasing; thus, we are all “artists.
James Peoples