Quotes by American Authors - Page 295

The man she despised had his job back. Her job. Damn it to hell. She’d never be able to live with him now.
Abby Niles
Which is a greater sin in the eyes of God: to let a child suffer and die to preserve your reputation, or to become friends with your enemy?
Jeremy Courtney
Watch out for a man whose enemies keep disappearing.
C.J. Cherryh
In reality, there are no enemies; we're all souls in growth, waking up
James Redfield
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those--in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed. Suffer them if you can’t escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible. Above all, try to avoid telling stories about the unjust treatment you received at their hands; avoid it no matter how receptive your audience may be. Tales of this sort extend the existence of your antagonists....
Joseph Brodsky
I like to kill my enemies and listen to the lamentations of their women
Ben Fountain
The mortal enemies of man are not his fellows of another continent or race; they are the aspects of the physical world which limit or challenge his control, the disease germs that attack him and his domesticated plants and animals, and the insects that carry many of these germs as well as working notable direct injury. This is not the age of man, however great his superiority in size and intelligence; it is literally the age of insects.
Warder C. Allee
We can retreat and retreat and let ourselves get backed into corners forever. Or we can go out and meet the enemy at the time and place we choose. Not them.
Richelle Mead
We cannot love our enemies until we see those twin truths: God loves me. God loves them.
Mary E. DeMuth
Villains and plots and enemies are simple things to me. But friendships are complicated, and love is harder still. It has wounded me deeper than a sword ever could.
Jennifer A. Nielsen
The most satisfying win over your enemies is to win them in life.
John Yang aka Private83
I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies - Q
John Green
Armise and I had met through the scope of our rifles and sometimes I wondered if that was also where we'd end.
S.A. McAuley
Are these soldiers really our enemy, or only the worst reflection of our own selves?... We made them. We have to unmake them, not just defeat or kill them.
Kate Elliott
The ideological premise, however, "can" not be defective; it is sacrosanct. ... Whatever does not seem right, whatever does not fit, must be explained by something wrong outside of the ideology; for its perfection is beyond all doubt. In (t)his way the ideology immunizes itself by offering more and more hair-splitting accusations. Betrayal and the dark powers of inner and outer enemies lie in wait everywhere. Theories about conspiracies develop and conveniently hide the absurdity of the premise, necessitating and justifying bloody purges.
Paul Watzlawick
Don't make the mistake of underestimating your enemies.
Bohdi Sanders
The reason people will attack you never really has anything to do with you. It stems from their OWN evil thoughts that they entertain and from wanting and not getting their way.
Sandra M. Michelle
I was the Reaper and he was the Ghost, and his soul was long overdue for collection
Quil Carter
Have you ever considered that you shouldn't pray for God to deliver you from your enemies, rather deliver you from yourself so you can not hate them?
Shannon L. Alder
God can make your enemies your footstool.
Joel Osteen
Tragic to kill a friend in battle by mistake when there are so many enemies to go around.
Raymond E. Feist
Old enemies must be friends when a greater evil looms.
Raymond E. Feist
...nothing cements a friendship like hating the same person.
Steven Strogatz
Ah, there you are, Bard,” came a familiar voice, and she turned to see Alucard striding over.“Saints, is that a dress you’re in? The crew will never believe it.”“You’ve got to be kidding me,” growled Kell.
V.E. Schwab
I was eleven years old, and I’d lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you.” “It made us roommates,” he says. I shake my head. “We were always more.” “We were enemies.”“You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.
Rainbow Rowell
If you want to succeed, get some enemies.
Thomas Edison
It will be impossible to catch all the rats, my love,” he says. His hand brushes against mine. “Sooner or later, one will squeeze through the cracks. You need to be more careful.
Marie Lu
Watch your back, little wolf, they say. Enemies arise from unexpected places.
Marie Lu
The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.
John Lescroart
one day my best friend said to me 'Jess, you rock a lot of polka dots' and that was the deal breaker, now we're mortal enemies
Zooey Deschanel
When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping.
Maria Callas
My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
Henry David Thoreau
A man who lies about beer makes enemies
Stephen King
Show no fear to your enemies. Only contempt. Never let anyone look down on you. You're just as good as any of them. I don't care who they are. Better in fact. In our world, Dagans are royalty and you, my son, are a prince.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson
I have no enemies. I dont permit such a thing.
Cormac McCarthy
I smile to myself knowing that they may be dead.
Emilie Autumn
If you have enemies, good that means you stood up for something.
Eminem
In my opinion and to the best of my understanding, free-will and pre-determination are two distinctly different economies that are 'operationally co-existent'".
R. Alan Woods
Oh, what an unbearable yoke is free will! What a vicious curse of the gods, granting self-determination to creatures incapable of guiding themselves! What good parent would free a child among tigers?
J. Robert King
Mastema prefers absolutes. He wants fences on the world and everything in its place, neat and tidy as a churchyard garden. God is not like that. God is boundless. For all his wisdom, Mastema cannot comprehend Yahweh’s need for surprises. An omniscient Being would naturally yearn for things beyond His control, futures He could not see, wills He could influence but not command. Strange, yes. It is odd when the puppeteer desires his wooden slaves to cut their strings, yet that is exactly what He did when he granted humans free will.
Kirby Crow
They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die to in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren't alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn't say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn't say I will spend all my money in order to save money. He doesn't say I will burn my house to down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living?
Dalton Trumbo
Free will...it's all the rage these days
Lauren Kate
As free as you allow others to be, such freedom you create for yourself.
Bryant McGill
What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?
Sam Harris
We are not self-caused little gods.
Sam Harris
The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available.
Ted Chiang
Freedom that is not fought for, that is not gained by personal sacrifice is freedom that will never last, because in the heart of the one set free, it will have little value. A treasure that costs nothing is a treasure that is easily neglected and lost.
Bryan Davis
It's not enough, is it? Just to follow; just to have faith in someone bigger and smarter and better informed. That's how we're built, that's how every Partial is wired - to follow orders and trust in our leaders - but it's not enough. It never has been. We've followed our leaders, and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose; we do what they say and we play our part. But this is our decision. Our mission. And when we're done, it will be our victory, or our defeat. I don't want to fail, but if I do, I want to be able to look back and say, 'I did that. I failed. That was all me.
Dan Wells
Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time.“Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.
Ted Chiang
Peace adores above everything free discussion and expression without intimidation.
Bryant McGill
I think my dad was so fascinated by this idea because he realizedon some fundamental level that he was not in control of his desires:I think he woke up every morning in his nice house with hardwoodfloors and granite countertops and wondered why he desired granitecountertops and hardwood floors, wondered who precisely wasrunning his life.
John Green
If God did not arrange [the world] this way, then there must be an independent factor in the universe. And if there is such, one consequence and perhaps two follow. First, the doctrine of creation must be abandoned. A creation ex nihilo would be completely in God's control. Independent forces cannot be created forces, and created forces cannot be independent. Then, second, if the universe is not God's creation, his knowledge of it--past and future--cannot depend on what he intends to do, but on his observation of how it works. In such a case, how could we be sure that God's observations are accurate? How could we be sure that these independent forces will not later show an unsuspected twist that will falsify God's predictions? And, finally, on this view God's knowledge would be empirical, rather than an integral part of his essence, and thus he would be a dependent knower. These objections are insurmountable. We can consistently believe in creation, omnipotence, omniscience, and the divine decree. But we cannot retain sanity and combine any one of these with free will.
Gordon H. Clark
[Pertaining to The Law of Free Will and Karma]: Disputing traditional cause and effect karmic doctrine, Kuan Yin maintains that it is the accumulated beliefs from parallel realities creating “made-up stories” about oneself and, thus, reality. Because of this quantum factor, we have absolute Free Will to attract optimum realities from infinite, simultaneous Evolutionary Potentials. Thus, according to Kuan Yin, where and how skillfully one focuses their intention and attention can determine an outcome.
Hope Bradford
The division in human religion has always been between those who see the fall of man as a fall into freedom and those who see it as an act of defiance against the tyranny of an all-powerful father. But Adam and Eve were never in heaven; they were in the mud, and had to leave the only home they had ever known behind. And why? For choosing love and freedom over perpetual infancy and slavery of the will. Their sin was moral responsibility. Their reward is clear: "They have becomes gods--knowing good and evil." And for that, they were condemned to live in a world of discovery and choices.
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Every day is a blank canvas to use our free will to create something beautiful for our Creator.
Alisa Hope Wagner
No attempt should be made to "reconcile" Yahweh's hardening of Pharaoh's heart (plagues 6,8,9,10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, that Pharaoh has already demonstrated his recalcitrance, so Yahweh merely helps the process along, or that he is doing what Pharaoh would have done on his own anyway. Rather, 9:12 is a striking reminder of what God has been trying to teach Moses and Israel since the beginning of the Exodus episode: He is in complete control. However Pharaoh might have reacted is given the chance is not brought into the discussion. He is not even given that chance. Yahweh hardens his heart. It is best to allow the tension of the text to remain.
Peter Enns
The answer to the question raised in the title of this essay - Is salvation a matter of divine determination or human responsibility? - is not divine determination or human responsibility. The only thoroughly biblical answer is yes. Scripturally, it is not an 'either-or' but a 'both-and' proposition. Why is this so hard? For one thing, it is logically unsatisfactory and apparently contradictory. Our insatiable appetite for order and answers makes it difficult to admit...that God's ways are not our ways, and leave it at that. (Isaiah 55:9). We don't mind applying this principle in a general, hypothetical way to God's wisdom or methods. But we balk when interferes with our theological system, our obsession with pigeonholing every Bible fact into a neat, orderly arrangement that leaves no questions unanswered. God transcends our logic. He is supra-logical. His thinking, His design, His way, His theology is infinitely above our intellect, beyond the grasp of our comprehension, out of the reach of our clever rationalizations. God is theo-logical. Man is anthropo-logical.
Layton Talbert
You are free. The world is yours. got take it.
Brom
And so from then onwards, Daniel understood that the point of this grueling sundial project was not merely to plot the curve but to understand why each curve was shaped as it was. To put it another way, Isaac wanted to be able to walk up to a blank wall on a cloudy day, stab a gnomom into it, and draw all of the curves simply by knowing where shadow would pass. This was the same thing as knowing where the sun would be in the sky and that was the same as knowing where the Earth was in its circuit around the sun, and in its daily rotation. Though as months went on, Daniel understood that Isaac wanted to be able to do the same thing even if the blank wall happened to be situated on, say, the moon that Christiaan Huygens had lately discovered revolving around Saturn. Exactly how this might be accomplished was a question with ramifications that extended into such fields as would Isaac, and Daniel for that matter, be thrown out of Trinity College? Were the Earth and all the works of man nearing the end of a long, relentless decay that had begun with the expulsion from Eden, and that would very soon culminate in the apocalypse? Or might things actually be getting better, with the promise of continuing to do so? Did people have souls? Did they have free will?
Neal Stephenson