Quotes by American Authors - Page 3272

Lost Time is never found again.
Benjamin Franklin
No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
Ernest Hemingway
If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door
Milton Berle
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
William James
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.
Rick Riordan
Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.
Bob Dylan
No man is poor who has a Godly mother.
Abraham Lincoln
Hide not your talents, they for use were made,What's a sundial in the shade?
Benjamin Franklin
Recognizing power in another does not diminish your own.
Joss Whedon
I AM IGNORANT of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.
Kahlil Gibran
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
Albert Einstein
The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one.
Goldie Hawn
Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.
Stephen Colbert
When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.
Harper Lee
Wise? No, I simply learned to think.
Christopher Paolini
The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.
Theodore Roosevelt
You're going to meet many people with domineering personalities: the loud, the obnoxious, those that noisily stake their claims in your territory and everywhere else they set foot on. This is the blueprint of a predator. Predators prey on gentleness, peace, calmness, sweetness and any positivity that they sniff out as weakness. Anything that is happy and at peace they mistake for weakness. It's not your job to change these people, but it's your job to show them that your peace and gentleness do not equate to weakness. I have always appeared to be fragile and delicate but the thing is, I am not fragile and I am not delicate. I am very gentle but I can show you that the gentle also possess a poison. I compare myself to silk. People mistake silk to be weak but a silk handkerchief can protect the wearer from a gunshot. There are many people who will want to befriend you if you fit the description of what they think is weak; predators want to have friends that they can dominate over because that makes them feel strong and important. The truth is that predators have no strength and no courage. It is you who are strong, and it is you who has courage. I have lost many a friend over the fact that when they attempt to rip me, they can't. They accuse me of being deceiving; I am not deceiving, I am just made of silk. It is they who are stupid and wrongly take gentleness and fairness for weakness. There are many more predators in this world, so I want you to be made of silk. You are silk.
C. JoyBell C.
We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.
Alan W. Watts
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.
Michael Levine
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Abraham Lincoln
It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.
George R.R. Martin
Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Harper Lee
Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
Leo Buscaglia
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.
Anne Bradstreet
There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself.
Laurell K. Hamilton
We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.
T.S Eliot
I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.
Bruce Lee
The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.
Thomas Paine
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens
Jimi Hendrix
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
Truman Capote
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
Albert Einstein
It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.
Albert Einstein
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,That we may record our emptiness.
Kahlil Gibran
The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.
Marjorie Pay Hinckley
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.
Patrick Rothfuss
Think before you speak. Read before you think.
Fran Lebowitz
Any fool can know. The point is to understand.
Albert Einstein
In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.
Mark Twain
Hold fast to dreams,For if dreams dieLife is a broken-winged bird,That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
Mark Twain
People need God the way a three-year-old needs a chainsaw.
Ursula K Le Guin
We all know who you are, Mr. Coughlin. Famous Yankee gangster. Friend of the colonel. It would be safer for a man to swim into the middle of the ocean and cut his own throat than to threaten you.' He solemnly made the sign of the cross. 'But when people starve and have nowhere to go, where would you have them end up?' 'Not on my land,' Joe said.'But it is not your land. It's God's. You are renting it. This rum? This life?' He patted his chest. 'We are all just renting from God.
Dennis Lehane
What kind of god would create a world in which the means of survival depends on our eating each other?
Marty Rubin
You're my guardian angel, Abbey," she said as she climbed into the car."No, not really, Sam. I'm just a messenger.""But that’s what angels are. That’s how God says, 'I'm here, and it's going to be all right.
Emily Ann Benedict
The practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance.
Miroslav Volf
Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
Josh Billings
God cannot and will not give us a sense of lasting pleasure apart from him, because it violates his purpose and our design. Psalm 34:8 reads, “Taste and see that the LORD is good.
Kyle Idleman
If believers in God don't honor the cries and claims of the poor, we don't honor him, whatever we profess, because we hide his beauty from the eyes of the world. When we pour ourselves out for the poor—that gets the world's notice.
Timothy J. Keller
Why do deprivation, adversity, scarcity, and suffering often produce the best character qualities in us while prosperity, ease, and abundance often produce the worst? There is an invisible pattern in the design of deprivation: deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens it.
Bianca Olthoff
If we see some admirable work of human art, we are at once eager to investigate the nature, the manner, the end of its production; and the contemplation of the works of God stirs us with an incomparably greater longing to learn the principles, the method, the purpose of creation. This desire, this passion, has without doubt been implanted in us by God. And as the eye seeks light, as our body craves food, so our mind is impressed with the . . . natural desire to know the truth of God and the causes of what we observe." --Origen(185-254)
Bruce L. Shelley
I saw God wash the world last nightWith His sweet showers on high and then when morning came i saw Him hang it out to dryHe washed it each blade of grassand every trembling tree;He flung His showers against the hills and swept the rolling seathe white rose is a cleaner whitethe red, a richer redSince God washed every fragrant faceand put them to bedtheres not a bird theres not a beethe wings along the way but is a cleaner bird or beethan it was yesterdayi saw God wash the world last nightah would He wash meas clean of all my dust and dirtas that old birch tree!
Dr. W. L. Stiger
All things are important to Elôm, even the little things.
Jaye L. Knight
The Incas were right to worship the sun, Father. God is fire. Combustion is the one inarguable blessing. A tree, oil, coal, a man, a civilization, a soul. They've all got to burn sometime. The warmth made by their passing may be the salvation of others. The ultimate value of the Bible, the Constitution, or any work of literature, really, is that they all burn very well, and for a while they keep back the cold.
Joe Hill
Unless there is a God, all morality is just opinion and belief. And virtually every atheist philosopher has acknowledged this.
Dennis Prager
Without God, right and wrong are just personal beliefs. Personal opinions. I think shoplifting is okay, you don’t.
Dennis Prager