Quotes by American Authors - Page 3231

If it is possible to die of grief then why on earth can't someone be healed by happiness?
Jodi Picoult
Percy wakes me (fourteen)Percy wakes me and I am not ready.He has slept all night under the covers.Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter Where he is not supposed to be. How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you Needed me, To wake me. He thought he would a lecture and deeply His eyes begin to shine.He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.He squirms and squeals: he has done something That he needed And now he hears that it is okay. I scratch his ears. I turn him over And touch him everywhere. He isWild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then He has breakfast, and he is happy.This is a poem about Percy.This is a poem about more than Percy.Think about it.
Mary Oliver
Your beliefs have the power to unlock your inner genius or keep you from fully achieving your greatest potential.
Deborah Day
Pick a sunset, and we'll ride off into it together.
T.M. Brenner
If you are doing things in order to be happy...you're doing them in the wrong order.
Michael Neill
We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times was till I left, but I guess that's the way of it
Ron Rash
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
Maria Mitchell
-Please, Anita, go home, and don’t freak. Just go home, and be happy. Be happy, and let everyone around you be happy. Is that so hard?When Jason said it like that, it didn’t seem hard. In fact, it seemed to make a lot of sense, but inside, it felt hard. Inside it felt like the hardest thing in the world. To just let go, and not pick everything to death. To just let go and enjoy what you had. To just let go and not make everybody around you miserable with your own internal dialogue. To just let go and be happy. So simple. So difficult. So terrifying.
Laurell K. Hamilton
If you can have everything at fifty that you wanted when you were fifteen, you're happy.
Alfred Bester
The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself. It is in this relationship that you set the standard for all others.
Steve Maraboli
I think it doesn’t matter if you or I or anybody else thinks homosexuality is a sin. It doesn’t matter if you or I think anything is a sin. It doesn’t matter if homosexuality is a sin or not. In fact, it doesn’t matter if anything anybody else does is a sin or not.Because sin is a very personal thing! It always has been and it always will be!And it has nothing to do with love.
Dan Pearce
You don't have to be like anyone else. You just need to learn more about your own creative self and start blooming.
Deborah Day
The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.
Janet Fitch
The most important reason for your “no” is that you need your downtime so you won’t behave like a jerk because you’re depleted. And you don’t want to battle an appetite spiked by the stress of overcommitment. But that’s your secret; others don’t need that information. So just smile, say no, thank you, and keep moving.
Holly Mosier
Make a pledge to yourself right now, to declare that you are worth your time and energy.
Deborah Day
A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy
John Irving
I am happy that I can aid those admirable men, both living and dead, who by their pens or their tongues have aided the great cause of human liberty and universal happiness.
James Watson
One thing I've learned: we don't stumble accidentally into an amazing life. It takes decision, a commitment to consistently work on ourselves.
Kamal Ravikant
We advocate the atheistic philosophy because it is the only clear, consistent position which seems possible to us. As atheists, we simply deny the assumptions of theism; we declare that the God idea, in all its features, is unreasonable and unprovable; we add, more vitally, that the God idea is an interference with the interests of human happiness and progress. We oppose religion not merely as a set of theological ideas; but we must also oppose religion as a political, social and moral influence detrimental to the welfare of humanity.
E. Haldeman-Julius
Your happiness and suffering depend on your actions and not on my wishes for you.
Jack Kornfield
By making yourself a life-long leaner you’ll keep discovering new and exciting things about yourself and others.
Rachel Robins
You are the moon that breaks the night . You are the fear that I hate to fight. Times are wrong in all that is done. My treasure is love that I give to only one. Cherrish the treasures given to your heart and never let anything hurt from the start. You chose your path so accept and believe, that peace love and light are needed to breathe.
Peace Gypsy
Happiness is wanting what you have.
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Huge difference between being happy at will, and chasing euphoric moments as an escape. One doesn't cost a dime, the other will tax your soul.
T.F. Hodge
If you walk in joy, happiness is close behind.
Todd Stocker
Don't interpret anything too much. This is time waster number 1.
Dee Dee Artner
How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.
Edgar Allan Poe
Joy weathers any storm: Happiness rides the waves.
Todd Stocker
Do you not realize that your kids are going to make mistakes, and a lot of them? Do you not realize the damage you do when you push your son’s nose into his mishaps or make your daughter feel worthless because she bumped or spilled something? Do you have any idea how easy it is to make your child feel abject? It’s as simple as letting out the words, “why would you do that!?” or “how many times have I told you…
Dan Pearce
If you have time to whine then you have time to find solution.
Dee Dee Artner
Dads. Do your faces light up when you first see your child in the morning or when you come home from work? Do you not understand that a child’s entire sense of value can revolve around what they see in your face when you first see them?
Dan Pearce
Personality begins where comparison leaves off. Be unique. Be memorable. Be confident. Be proud.
Shannon L. Alder
I felt I could turn the earth upside down with my littlest finger. I wanted to dance, to fly in the air and kiss the sun and stars with my singing heart. I, alone with myself, was enjoying myself for the first time as with grandest company.
Anzia Yezierska
I like the disaster of the night sky, stars spilling this way and that as if they were upturned from a glass. I like the way good madness feels. I like the way laughter always spills. That's the word for it. It never just comes, it spills. I like the word 'again'. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. I like the quiet sound a coffee cup makes when it's set down on a wooden table. So hushed. So inviting. Like morning light yawning through the window and stretching out onto the kitchen floor. I like the way girls' lips look like they're stained with berries. I like the way morning light breaks like a prism through the empty wine bottles on our dusty apartment floor. Glasses empty except for the midnight hour. I like the way blueberries stain my fingers during the summer. I like the way light hits your eyes and turns it into a color that doesn't exist anywhere else other than in this moment. I want it all. I want the breeze to call my name as it rushes down my street, looking for me. I want to feel grass underneath my bare feet and I want to feel the sun kiss freckles onto my cheeks. I want to hear you yell hello as you make your way towards me, not goodbye as you have to go. That's just a little bit about me.
Marlen Komar
I believe our clever young man has intuited that while only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
She doesn't need your money. Even a penniless fool like you can make her fall in love with you. That's just miracle.
Vann Chow
Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product. attr to Buthan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck
John Robbins
I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world's goods. But blow for blow I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world's happiness.
Charles E. Coughlin
Holiness leads to wholeness and wholeness leads to happiness.
Leslie Vernick
Where else," I will say, "does an old turtle crossing the path Make all the difference in the world?
Patricia MacLachlan
...the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A sense of peace came over me and I must have been smiling as I fell asleep.
Harry Bernstein
When I count my blessings, I find you in every one.
Richelle E. Goodrich
It might be true that it is “quality time” that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Analyzing data from 79 men and women who wore inconspicuous devices that recorded some of their conversations over the course of four days, researchers from Washington University and the University of Arizona found a correlation between feelings of well-being and the amount of time spent talking every day. Moreover, the more substantive your conversations, the happier you're likely to be. In other words, heart-to-hearts trump small talk. (LA Times, "A lof of happy talk", March 11, 2010, A21.)
Meghan Daum
Don't look to a husband or a child or a friend or your family to make you happy. It is not within their capacity to do so.
Barbara Barrington Jones
…feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them.
Louisa May Alcott
..there is more to life than just pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it.
Eric Weiner
There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.
Gretchen Rubin
Our greatest happiness comes from the experience of love & compassion.
Allan Lokos
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities..
Christian Nestell Bovee
Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, ‘Look at my beautiful home! Isn’t it fine?’ And not, ‘Look at the home so-and-so has built.’ Thus we shouldn’t cry, ‘Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!’ But rather, ‘Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave?
Roman Payne
Man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
Albert Einstein
If you think happiness is a rare bird you won't see much of it.
Marty Rubin
The end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature
John Piper
I could hear the knock and whistle of the water pipes, the purr of the calico cat. And at that moment a happiness filled me that was pure and perfect and yet it was bled with despair - as if I had been handed a cup of ambrosial nectar to drink from and knew that once I finished drinking, the cup would be withdrawn forever, and nothing to come would ever taste as good.
David Leavitt
Intent not followed by action is an insult to your design. Decide what you want, create a plan, and get your ass out there!
Steve Maraboli
It turns out that what money buys has rapidly diminishing emotional returns ... As long as we're not destitute, happiness depends less on getting what we want than appreciating what we already have.
Robert B. Reich
There were happy days, with watermelon, and sad days of whiskey.
Lewis Nordan
Every day, you get the opportunity to change your life. Change what you do not want. Change what makes you unhappy.
Rodolfo Costa