Quotes by American Authors - Page 3359

If we constantly focus only on the stones in our mortal path, we willalmost surely miss the beautiful flower or cool stream provided by theloving Father who outlined our journey. Each day can bring more joythan sorrow when our mortal and spiritual eyes are open to God'sgoodness. Joy in the gospel is not something that begins only in thenext life. It is our privilege now, this very day. We must never allowour burdens to obscure our blessings. There will always be moreblessings than burdens--even if some days it doesn't seem so. Jesussaid, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have itmore abundantly." Enjoy those blessings right now. They are yours andalways will be.
Jeffrey R. Holland
Deep down, I don’t believe it takes any special talent for a person to lift himself off the ground and hover in the air. We all have it in us—every man, woman, and child—and with enough hard work and concentration, every human being is capable of…the feat….You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.Like so.
Paul Auster
When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.
Clarence Darrow
I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.
Madeleine K. Albright
Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.
Nikola Tesla
Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.
Arthur Golden
You have two choices, to conquer your fear or to let your fear conquer you.
Roy T. Bennett
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is a love story. Twisted and messy. Flawed and screwed up. But it's ours. It's us. I don't know how our story will end. but I know it will start.
Michelle Hodkin
If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.
Christopher Isherwood
One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral, and transitory. It comes when it pleases,and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure. Worry will never bring it back.
Napoleon Hill
Naw, Jem. I think that there is just one kind of folks. Folks."Jen turned and punched his pillow. WHen he settle back his face was cloudy. He was going in to one of his declines, and I grew wary. His brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He was silent for a while. That is what I thought, too," he said at last, "when I was your age. If there is just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go ut of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I am beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley stayed shut up in the house all this time...it's because he wants to stay inside
Harper Lee
Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration.You saying God vain? I ast.Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.What it do when it pissed off? I ast.Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
Alice Walker
Life is a journey, not a destination; there are no mistakes, just chances we've taken.
India.Arie
All men are created equal. It is what you do from there that makes the difference. We are all free agents in life. We make our own decisions. We control our own destiny.
Glenn Beck
If you want to find happiness, find gratitude.
Steve Maraboli
We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.
Peter Kreeft
Feel the fear and do it anyway!
Susan Jeffers
He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute.
Stephen King
The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it's what you believe, and the heck with everybody.
Justin Cronin
If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I like people for all of their changing surprises, the thoughts in their heads, the warmth that changes to cold and the cold that changes to warmth... for being human. The rawness of being human delights me.
C. JoyBell C.
I suppose we'll never know what really happened in that room, though he did tell police, "I did it because I'm a dirty dog." This is not a very convincing alibi. He may as well have said, "I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one.
Chuck Klosterman
Heaven help the roses if the bombs begin to fall
Stevie Wonder
Helen Keller became deaf, dumb, and blind shortly after birth. Despite her greatest misfortune, she has written her name indelibly in the pages of the history of the great. Her entire life has served as evidence that no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality.
Napoleon Hill
Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.
Bob Goff
After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?
Russell Hoban
I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!
James McBride
Silk is a fine, delicate, soft, illuminating, beautiful substance. But you can never rip it! If a man takes this tender silk and attempts to tear it, and cannot tear it, is he in his right mind to say "This silk is fake! I thought it was soft, I thought it was delicate, but look, I cannot even tear it" ? Surely, this man is not in his right mind! The silk is not fake! This silk is 100% real. It's the man who is stupid!
C. JoyBell C.
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences...
Susan B. Anthony
The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.
Neale Donald Walsch
Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come. It will.
Norman Vincent Peale
I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness.
Maya Angelou
I think one of the sweetest lessons taught by the Prophet, and yet one of the saddest, occurred close to the time of his death. He was required to leave his plan and vision of the Rocky Mountains and give himself up to face a court of supposed justice.These are his words: 'I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men' (D&C 135:4). That statement of the Prophet teaches us obedience to law and the importance of having a clear conscience toward God and toward our fellowmen. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught these principles--by example.There was to be one great final lesson before his mortal life ended. He was incarcerated in Carthage Jail with his brother Hyrum, with John Taylor, and with Willard Richards. The angry mob stormed the jail; they came up the stairway, blasphemous in their cursing, heavily armed, and began to fire at will. Hyrum was hit and died. John Taylor took several balls of fire within his bosom. The Prophet Joseph, with his pistol in hand, was attempting to defend his life and that of his brethren, and yet he could tell from the pounding on the door that this mob would storm that door and would kill John Taylor and Willard Richards in an attempt to kill him.And so his last great act here upon the earth was to leave the door and lead Willard Richards to safety, throw the gun on the floor, and go to the window, that they might see him, that the attention of this ruthless mob might be focused upon him rather than the others. Joseph Smith gave his life. Willard Richards was spared, and John Taylor recovered from his wounds.'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends' (John 15:13). The Prophet Joseph Smith taught us love--by example.
Thomas S. Monson
Love means never having to be apart
James Patterson
Love so joyfully and freely given can never be taken away. It is never truly gone.
Cameron Dokey
I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die.
Colleen Houck
If you want the best the world has to offer, offer the world your best.
Neale Donald Walsch
If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.
Harvey Milk
Attitude is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, money, circumstances, than failures and success, than what other people think, say, or do. It is more important than appearance, ability, or skill. It will make or break a business, a home, a friendship, an organization. The remarkable thing is I have a choice every day of what my attitude will be. I cannot change my past. I cannot change the actions of others. I cannot change the inevitable. The only thing I can change is attitude. Life is ten percent what happens to me and ninety percent how I react to it.
Charles R. Swindoll
Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace it.
Veronica Roth
The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.2.tForgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.3.tDeath ends a life, not a relationship.4.tOnce you learn how to die, you learn how to live.5.tSometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too-even when you are in the dark. Even when you're falling.6.tAs you grow old, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, its also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.
Morrie Schwartz
I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.
Maya Angelou
Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don't read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies.Watch exercise shows on television, but don't do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises.Don't power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap.
S.A.R.K.
Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.
Sherman Alexie
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner
I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim—so modestly and so humbly—to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.
Christopher Hitchens
Today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again.
Eleanor Roosevelt
One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.
Bell Hooks
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
Morrie Schwartz
Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
Richard Bach
It was the moment I realized what music can do to people, how it can make you hurt and feel so good all at once.
Nina LaCour
I don’t need any plastic in my body to validate me as a woman.
Courtney Love
Fear is a natural emotion in life, but you cannot let it dictate your actions. When you act out of fear, you will only meet failure. But act out of determination to conquer that fear, and you will succeed at anything. Maybe not the first time, or the second or third, but eventually—as long as you keep trying—you can conquer your fears and succeed.
Tiana Dalichov
That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but our power to do so is increased.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Guilt starts as a feeling of failure.
Frank Herbert
It is possible for the human spirit to win after all.
Jack Kerouac
A real scientist solves problems, not wails that they are unsolvable.
Anne McCaffrey
If you can control your behavior when everything around you is out of control, you can model for your children a valuable lesson in patience and understanding...and snatch an opportunity to shape character.
Jane Clayson Johnson