Quotes by American Authors - Page 3300

And if we do not stand now, then when will a stand be taken against evil?
Bodie Thoene
It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us.
Carl Sagan
A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
Saul Bellow
Listening to people espouse beliefs different from mine is informative, not threatening, because the only thing that can alter my worldview is a new and undeniable truth, and contrary to what Jack Nicholson says in 'A Few Good Men', "I CAN handle the truth.
Michael J. Fox
Just because other people think something, that doesn't make it true.Maybe there's some truth in that, but it's unsatisfying, bitter-tasting truth.
Cynthia Lord
We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Dementia was like a truth serum.
Amy Tan
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Mark Twain
But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.
Lionel Shriver
I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things. For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities. But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?
Kij Johnson
The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Truth is the same always. Whoever ponders it will get the same answer. Buddha got it. Patanjali got it. Jesus got it. Mohammed got it. The answer is the same, but the method of working it out may vary this way or that. (115)
Swami Satchidananda
In fact we put so many things in our mouths we constantly have to be reminded what not to eat. Look at that little package of silicon gel that's inside your sneakers. It says DO NOT EAT for a reason. Somewhere sometime some genius bought a pair of sneakers and said Ooooh look. They give you free mints with the shoes
Morgan Spurlock
You have to notice the truth in order to be able to avoid it.
Sarah Schulman
They should know that just because things get difficult, it's no reason to believe God is on vacation.
Harry H. Harrison Jr.
Because supposedly those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
Chuck Palahniuk
It is better to be divided by truth than united in error.
Bruce Bickel
I don't reckon misery loves any damn thing at all.
Bruce Machart
My mother told me that truth is like my skin, a beautiful, protective covering, and the things that people say or do can be easily changed or discarded. She told me truth comes from the heart.
Stewart Lewis
She told the truth as she saw it, and she died for it. I came along for the ride, and I lived. It wasn't worth it. But it was the truth, and it was what had to happen.
Mira Grant
I almost cried. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.
Gary D. Schmidt
When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.
Jodi Picoult
But it's important to acknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn from them.
Sarah Dessen
Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.
Anne Rice
You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take.
Sarah Dessen
Jesus didn't speak of hell so that we could study, debate and write books about it. He gave us these passages so that we would live holy lives. Jesus evidently hates it when we tear into our brothers or sisters with demeaning words, words that fail to honor the people around us as the beautiful image-bearing creatures that they are.
Francis Chan
People only lie because they are afraid of the truth
Madison Reil
If anything or anyone removes peace from you or inflicts confusion and judgment on you, this thing or person is not of God regardless of whether or not that person or thing has wrapped itself/himself in the wrapping paper with God's face printed all over it. Don't stop believing in God but stop believing in that person, in that thing. The wrapping paper with God's face stamped all over it isn't really God.
C. JoyBell C.
My mother always says people should be able to take care of themselves, even if they're rich and important.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish’.
Mitch Albom
The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined.
Raquel Cepeda
The act of going within, finding our truth, and then sharing it, it helps us far more than we know.
Kamal Ravikant
Ask yourself: what is it, that if I believed it down to my core, would change everything?
Kamal Ravikant
The universe contains many planets which make it what it is – a unified system. In addition, our bodies contain many organs, and each part is congruent to a planet in our solar system. The universe we see out our eyes is a mirror of what is within us. This is what God meant by making man in his image. We are all made as a reflection of God and that reflection of him is within us. Furthermore, not only are all religions connected to the same Truth, or Cosmic Heart, but this concept is also mirrored in the pantheons of ancient religions, where each of the many gods simply represented one set of characteristics of the ONE. And in all cases, these many gods symbolized the planets, therefore mimicking the different parts of the universe and the ONE God’s many mirrors (He Who is All). The structure behind all polytheistic religions of the past and present is one and the same. They are all built on the same foundation as Nature.
Suzy Kassem
Maybe I could dole out the truth in tiny pieces that, once assembled, would make a picture that resembled a reality in which I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Paula Stokes
...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.
Patti Smith
As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?
Criss Jami
He told us that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. He told us to seek justice rather than the Game.
Sheri S. Tepper
It is simply a confession that with all that I've seen in the last few years, all the events I've been invited to, and all the people whom I've met, I am less and less impressed by "impressive" things or people who are presented as having things figured out. I am impressed by people who are honest and kind. I am inspired by moments of vulnerability, moments of confession and compassion, moments where someone makes it clear that they are a person in need of other people and someone else makes it clear that the first person is not alone.
Jamie Tworkowski
We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.
Anaïs Nin
It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.
Chuck Palahniuk
Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor. Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined…It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.
Adrienne Rich
The truth is, it's really only okay to be yourself if that self is within an accepted range of 'normal'.
Stacey Kade
For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth
Bo Bennett
When someone you love makes compassion, kindness, forgiveness, respect and God an option, you can be sure they have made you an option, as well.
Shannon L. Alder
When you start putting pen to paper, you see a side of your personal truth that doesn't otherwise reveal itself in conversation or thought.
Anthony Kiedis
But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.
Jodi Picoult
It is debatable whether blind faith is truly faith at all. Faith is the perceptive gray area where scientific facts meet an individual's experiential truths - the extreme of the former is left feeling in the dark whereas the latter is caught blinded by the light. By proper scientific method, it is intellectually dishonest for me to declare the existence of God with utmost certainty, but to my individual spirit, I would be intellectually dishonest to deny the existence of God even for a second. This leaves the best of both worlds, as the believer is called to be able to give reasons for his faith, a deviation from mere fantasy.
Criss Jami
...we are singing today of the WIPE-OUT GANG - the WIPE-OUT GANG buys, owns & operates the Insanity Factory - if you do not know where the Insanity Factory is located, you should hereby take two steps to the right, paint your teeth & go to sleep....
Bob Dylan
The Buddha taught complete honesty, with the extra instruction that everything a person says should be truthful and helpful.
Sylvia Boorstein
confront your greatest fearsvoice your biggest problemsacknowledge your tiniest issuesthe longer you stay silentthe louder they becomethey won't disappear if you ignore themthey will spread and affect all aspects of your life
Connor Franta
It is as if Little Red Riding Hood had asked the wolf: "Dear Grandmother, what is the truth for?" And the wolf had replied: "The truth helps me tell you better lies.
Sara Castro-Klarén
A professionally trained actress should be a better liar, wouldn't you think? But no. I am pathetically underachieved in that area. I can think of a great lie. I'm plenty imaginative. But before the words are even out of my mouth, there's a weird tickle of unease in my armpits, a horsefly of guilt lands on the back of my neck, and before I can stop myself, that gassy little bubble of truth belches out.
Kristin Chenoweth
Something went klunk. Like a nickel dropping in a soda machine. One of those small insights that explains everything. This was puberty for these boys. Adolescence. The first date, the first kiss, the first chance to hold hands with someone special. Delayed, postponed, a decade's worth of longing--while everybody around you celebrates life, you pretend, suppress, inhibit, deprive yourself of you own joy--but finally ultimately, eventually, you find a place where you can have a taste of everything denied.
David Gerrold
Ladies! I encourage you NOT to be so easily flattered by what a man has. Be flattered by his strength, courage, integrity, and character as a man. Be impressed by his ability to be honest, faithful, loving, and respectful to you. Be impressed because he can communicate and openly express his feelings. Be impressed because he’s got confidence, direction, and purpose in his life. Be impressed because he’s a quality man, NOT a fine man. Real Talk!
Stephanie Lahart
There are few things in life worse than a long-winded lawyer.
John Grisham
I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing is possible, of the power of my work: as a sign that I am on the right track, that I am following the recipe correctly, speaking the proper spells. Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth, when the truth matters most, is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn’t give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn’t court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth. The adept handles the rich material, the rank river clay, and diligently intones his alphabetical spells, knowing full well the history of golems: how they break free of their creators, grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled. In the same way, the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay with the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life, heedless of the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God’s, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life.Originally published in The Washington Post Book World
Michael Chabon
To become a lifelong reader, one has to do a lot of varied and interesting reading.
Kelly Gallagher
I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views.”Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
Chaim Potok
To seek truth requires one to ask the right questions. Those void of truth never ask about anything because their ego and arrogance prevent them from doing so. Therefore, they will always remain ignorant. Those on the right path to Truth are extremely heart-driven and childlike in their quest, always asking questions, always wanting to understand and know everything — and are not afraid to admit they don't know something. However, every truth seeker does need to breakdown their ego first to see Truth. If the mind is in the way, the heart won't see anything.
Suzy Kassem