Quotes by American Authors - Page 3268

I've been the oldest child since before you were born
E.L. Konigsburg
Each person you meetis an aspect of yourself,clamoring for love.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Nobody is wired wrong, because there’s no wrong and right in the way we are.
Hannah Hart
Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.
Jack Kornfield
If you rest, you rust.
Helen Hayes
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
Henry David Thoreau
A day unemployed is like a bagel- even when it's bad, it's still pretty good...
CrimethInc.
Pull the string and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most important thing is this: to sacrifice what you are now for what you can become tomorrow.
Shannon L. Alder
Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.
Shannon L. Alder
....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.
Thomas Merton
There are questions I'm still not wise enough to answer, just wise enough to no longer ask.
George Jones
Perhaps the hardest lesson to learn is not to be attached to the results of your actions.
Joan Borysenko
Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise
David Zindell
Don't let others box you into their idea of what they think you should be. A confined identity is a miserable way to exist. Be you and live free. Trust that in living true to yourself, you will attract people that support and love you, just as you are.
Jaeda DeWalt
Remember, young man, experience is not the best teacher. Other people's experience is the best teacher. By reading about the lives of great people, you can unlock the secrets to what made them great.
Andy Andrews
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
Henry David Thoreau
Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as "fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales." And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day "advancements" we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question "Who designated myths and legends as unreality? " But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors "You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things" and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.
C. JoyBell C.
Must I accept the barren Gift?-learn death, and lose my Mastery?Then let them know whose blood and breathwill take the Gift and set them free:whose is the voice and whose the mindto set at naught the well-sung Game-when finned Finality arrivesand calls me by my secret Name.Not old enough to love as yet,but old enough to die, indeed--the death-fear bites my throat and heart,fanged cousin to the Pale One's breed.But past the fear lies life for all-perhaps for me: and, past my dread,past loss of Mastery and life,the Sea shall yet give up Her dead!Lone Power, I accept your Gift!Freely I make death a part of me;By my accept it is boundinto the lives of all the Sea-yet what I do now binds to ita gift I feel of equal worth:I take Death with me, out of Time,and make of it a path, a birth!Let the teeth come! As they tear me,they tear Your ancient hate for aye--so rage, proud Power! Fail again,and see my blood teach Death to die!
Diane Duane
Be beautiful if you can, wise if you want to, but be respected - that is essential.
Anna Gould
When I start a new seminar I tell my students that I will undoubtedly contradict myself, and that I will mean both things. But an acceptance of contradiction is no excuse for fuzzy thinking. We do have to use our minds as far as they will take us, yet acknowledge that they cannot take us all the way.
Madeleine L'Engle
If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren’t reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there’s nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it.
Adriana Trigiani
Tell no man anything, for no man listensYet hold thy lips ready to speak.
Carl Sandburg
Are we being good ancestors?
Jonas Salk
Wisdom can be gathered on 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. Of course, bad information is gathered in your downtime too. Bad information 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. One of wisdom's greatest benefits, is accurate discernment- the learned ability to immediately tell right from wrong. Good from evil. Acceptable from unacceptable. Time well spent from time wasted. The right decision from the wrong decision. And many times this is simply a matter of having the correct perspective. One way to define wisdom is THE ABILITY TO SEE, INTO THE FUTURE, THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR CHOICES IN THE PRESENT. That ability can give you a completely different perspective on what the future might look like... with a degree of intelligence and a hint of wisdom, most people can tell the difference between good and bad. However, it takes a truly wise person to discern the oh-so-thin line between good and best. And that line...[gives you the] perspective that allows you to see clearly the long-term consequences of your choices.
Andy Andrews
Don't assume the world evolved in the order in which you discovered it.
Raymond E. Feist
Sometimes, the simple things are more fun and meaningful than all the banquets in the world ...
E.A. Bucchianeri
To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.
Edith Wharton
Some people are like thorns. But you have to let them be thorns, because thorns can't turn into petals. The trick is not letting them prick you; never let a thorn prick you!
C. JoyBell C.
The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego.
Hamza Yusuf
It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.
Shannon L. Alder
The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it or to escape what is bad in it but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.
Wendell Berry
The best way to see Faith is to shut the eye of Reason.
Benjamin Franklin
Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.
Brian Tracy
A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin's face. 'There are those,' he said gently, 'who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you one who must follow such a way? This even I cannot know. If you are, take heart nonetheless. Those who reach the end do more than gain wisdom. As rough wool becomes cloth, and crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what they give back is greater than what they won.
Lloyd Alexander
In life, the hardest decisions often have to be made more than once. But each time, it gets easier.
Matthew J. Kirby
what's right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.
Bret Easton Ellis
Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.
Zora Neale Hurston
Probably the wisest words that were ever uttered to me. Came from a therapist. I was sitting in her office, crying my eyes out. . . and she said, "So let me get this straight. You base your personal happiness on things entirely out of your control.
Laura Munson
Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination
Neil deGrasse Tyson
If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us...then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place.
Amor Towles
Nico knew something about ghosts. Letting them get inside your head was dangerous. He wanted to help Reyna, but since his own strategy was to deal with his problems alone, spurning anyone who tried to get close, he couldn’t exactly criticize Reyna for doing the same thing.
Rick Riordan
The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.
Erich Maria Remarque
Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.
John Gierach
The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.
Clarence Darrow
It is born in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching the goal. The tragedy of life lies in having no goal to reach.
Benjamin E. Mays
There are two words that you should use frequently in your youth: ´sorry´ and ´thank-you´. Use the first one as often as possible, so that on your death bed all that you have to say to your friends is ´thank-you!´.
Robin Jones Gunn
Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.
Criss Jami
When there is a tendency to compartmentalize the spiritual and make it resident in a certain type of life only, the spiritual is apt gradually to be lost.
Flannery O'Connor
Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting, and healing a question of time. And anything good you've ever been given is yours forever.
Rachel Naomi Remen
Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.
Roy T. Bennett
It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.
E.A. Bucchianeri
The more you know, the less you need.
Yvon Chouinard
You see, to find the brightest wisdom one must pass through the darkest zones. And through the darkest zones there can be no guide. No guide, that is, but courage
Adam Gidwitz
I would rather carry around a plastic bag with five thousand Euro inside, than carry around a Louis Vuitton/Gucci/Prada bag with only one hundred Euro inside!
C. JoyBell C.
...unfortunately, it's true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. If you're not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.
Charles Yu
Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.
Wallace Stegner
I mean, reality sucks. The world is a cancer, and shits so bad it’s scary. Everything’s filthy. But you know what? One day, it’s not going to be here. So be glad you know what life is. You’re alive. Live.
Mitch Lucker