Quotes by American Authors - Page 3267

And someone, somewhere, was having an even worse time of it than me. I tried to keep that in mind. No matter how crappy your life, someone will probably beat you in the my-life-is-crap category. Not that I don't let myself whine a little now and then, but sometimes it's good to keep your misery in perspective
Lish McBride
Childbirth is normal until proven otherwise.
Peggy Vincent
Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
Henry David Thoreau
People love answers, but only as long as they are the ones who came up with them.
Criss Jami
Hardest of all, as one becomes older, is to accept that sapient remarks can be drawn from the most unwelcome or seemingly improbable sources, and that the apparently more trustworthy sources can lead one astray.
Christopher Hitchens
As we grow detached from things, we come (with God's help) to master our desires, and we give the mastery over to God. Discipline and divine grace heal the intellect and the will of the effects of concupiscence. We can begin to see things clearly.
Scott Hahn
That was courage, Keller thought. Not doing something without being afraid, but doing something even though you were afraid.
L.J. Smith
it's a rare day when she speaks in anything but platitudes--all those exhausted phrases and hand-me-down ideas that cram the dump sites of contemporary wisdom
Paul Auster
Remember, purpose is about giving...All you can do with your life is to give it away in the service of others.
Wayne W. Dyer
You must become the producer, director and actor in the unfolding story of your life.
Wayne W. Dyer
If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent's good will.
Dale Carnegie
I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain of dying. I would help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs.Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true.
Shirley Jackson
We are losing the ability to understand anything that's even vaguely complex.
Chuck Klosterman
I love you , Valentine’ is actually a popular phrase used in greeting cards.”If you were sending me one, what would it say?” he asks.I love you, too, Roman.”And there it is, words that I dread to say and do mean, because with them comes the responsibility of owning it, moving forward together and deciding for real who we are to each other. Now we’re not just lovers discovering what we like and sharing what we know. In this mutual declaration, we’re accountable to each other. We’re in love, and now, our relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead.
Adriana Trigiani
Mirrors that hide nothing hurt me. But this is the hurt of purging and precious renewal - and these are the mirrors of dangerous grace.
Walter Wangerin Jr.
Wind is renewable. Turbines are not.
Ozzie Zehner
The failure mode of clever is “asshole.
John Scalzi
Peaceful disputes are maintained when men sincerely believe that they are morally, logically correct about the issues at hand. It is when neither side is really certain that wars are instigated.
Criss Jami
For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.
Ann Patchett
Aeschylus writes, "In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grade of God.
Madeleine L'Engle
Boy, the solid things you can hold in your hands are never all you've got. They're the least of what belong to you. The qualities inside you, those are what you've really got to defend yourself with.
Traci L. Slatton
I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,Stuffed with the stuff that is course, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, one of the nation, of many nations, the smallest the same and the the largest
Walt Whitman
It’s obvious you kids are smart-school and good teachers will do that for you-but wisdom is something altogether different. Wisdom can be gathered in your downtime. Wisdom that can change the very course of your life will come from the people you are around, the books you read, and the things you listen to or watch on radio or television.
Andy Andrews
Just remember this, my girl, when you look up in the sky you can see the stars and still not see the light.
Jack Tempchin
The best kind of happiness is a habit you're passionate about.
Shannon L. Alder
The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.
Vera Nazarian
The main thing about ghosts – most of them have lost their voices. In Asphodel, millions of them wander around aimlessly, trying to remember who they were. You know why they end up like that? Because in life they never took a stand one way or another. They never spoke out, so they were never heard. Your voice is your identity. If you don’t use it,’ Nico said with a shrug, ‘you’re halfway to Asphodel already.’…He hated when his own advice applied to himself.
Rick Riordan
One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got you in you may never get over it as long as you live.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything.
Washington Irving
Ethical veganism represents a commitment to nonviolence.
Gary L. Francione
Listen. Pay attention. Treasure every moment.
Oprah Winfrey
Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, 'I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?
Margaret Maron
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann
Forever is a really long time, you know? What do you do with forever?""The same thing you do when you don't have forever." He smiled wanly. "Live.
Amanda Hocking
A moment of consideration often prevents a thousand apologies
Kevin J. Anderson
The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Wherever you are, however you got there, if it's good, you're meant to be there either because you earned it or life led you there and you were smart enough to hold on.
Kristen Ashley
You think money can solve any problem, but all it s good for is buying the things it can, and leaving you free to pursue the things it can't.
Ann Herendeen
Love begets wisdom, thus it is, as often misconceived, more than vain layers of tenderness; it is inherently rational and comprehensive of the problem within the problem: for instance, envy is one of the most excused sins in the media of political correctness. Those you find most attractive, or seem to have it all, are often some of the most insecure at heart, and that is because people assume that they do not need anything but defamation.
Criss Jami
Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a matter of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Pull all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." - Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Mark Twain
Veganism is an act of nonviolent defiance. It is our statement that we reject the notion that animals are things and that we regard sentient nonhumans as moral persons with the fundamental moral right not to be treated as the property or resources of humans.
Gary L. Francione
Cricket Bell.” I smiled into my phone. “How did you get so wise?
Stephanie Perkins
The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for "salvation." And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. The world is certainly thought of as a place of spiritual trial, but it is also the confluence of soul and body, word and flesh, where thoughts must become deeds, where goodness must be enacted. This is the great meeting place, the narrow passage where spirit and flesh, word and world, pass into each other. The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be "filled with light," perfected in understanding. And so everywhere there is the sense of consequence, fear and desire, grief and joy. What is desirable is repeatedly defined in the tensions of the sense of consequence.
Wendell Berry
If you’re reading these words, perhaps it’s because something has kicked open the door for you, and you’re ready to embrace change. It isn’t enough to appreciate change from afar, or only in the abstract, or as something that can happen to other people but not to you. We need to create change for ourselves, in a workable way, as part of our everyday lives.
Sharon Salzberg
For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
Audre Lorde
there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument - and that is to avoid it .
Dale Carnegie
Burnout is nature's way of telling you, you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system.
Sam Keen
Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
Napoleon Hill
Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.
Catherynne M. Valente
Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that - thoughts.
Allan Lokos
It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
John Witherspoon
We tend to live up to our expectations.
Earl Nightingale
The only way to move from your reality to God’s reality is through people who love you.
Shannon L. Alder
All pain is the same.
Oprah Winfrey
People talk to old people like they're children.'Oh you're very old aren't you?' Yeah I'm old. I'm not stupid.
Craig Ferguson
Money is the root of all evil.' Then we hear, 'A fool and his money are soon parted.' What are they talking about? If money is so evil, shouldn't it be, 'A wise man and his money are soon parted'? And another thing, how does a fool get money in the first place? I know some fools who have a lot of money, but they won't tell me how they got it, and I won't tell them.
George Burns
They were quiet for a while, eating, then Oromis asked, "Can you tell me, What is the most important mental tool a person can possess?"It was a serious question, and Eragon considered it for a reasonable span before he ventured to say, "Determination."Oromis tore the loaf in half with his long white fingers. "I can understand why you arrived at that conclusion-determination has served you well in your adventures-but no. I meant the tool most necessary to choose the best course of action in any given situation. Determination is as common among men who are dull and foolish as it is among those who are brilliant intellects. So, no, determination cannot be what we're looking for.
Christopher Paolini
For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong. – Bill W.
Bill W.
The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.”(August 9, 1955)
Flannery O'Connor