Quotes by American Authors - Page 3372

A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.
Carlos Castañeda
Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.
Maya Angelou
Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
Sam Harris
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
Andy Warhol
In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.
Fred Rogers
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.
Lucille Ball
Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.
Stephen King
I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan
Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.This was the important thing.It had always been the important thing. This was what it was to be Adam.
Maggie Stiefvater
life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.
Anaïs Nin
You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found.
Isabel Allende
Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean.""I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one.
Loren Eiseley
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.
Maya Angelou
Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain
It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.
Bruce Lee
To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.
Thomas Merton
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig
Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.
Cormac McCarthy
Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
Tennessee Williams
I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things. This much, at least, I've figured out. I know this much is true.
Wally Lamb
If they don't like you for being yourself, be yourself even more.
Taylor Swift
Never let a problem to be solved, become more important than a person to be loved.
Thomas S. Monson
The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers 'someday.' When they are out of high school, when they've finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire . . . That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' It all starts with the writing.
Robin Hobb
The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up.
JOHN C MAXWELL
The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. IN the end, though maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.
Sarah Dessen
Are you on our side...and want to be different, or are you on that side and want to throw a football at my head!?
Gerard Way
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
Frederick Buechner
Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams
R.J. Palacio
No DifferenceSmall as a peanut,Big as a giant,We're all the same sizeWhen we turn off the light.Rich as a sultan,Poor as a mite,We're all worth the sameWhen we turn off the light.Red, black or orange,Yellow or white, We all look the sameWhen we turn off the light.So maybe the way, To make everything rightIs for god to just reach outAnd turn off the light!
Shel Silverstein
What did you do?” I mumble. He is just a few feet away from me now, but not close enough to hear me. As he passes me he stretches out his hand. He wraps it around my palm and squeezes. Squeezes, then lets go. His eyes are bloodshot; he is pale. “What did you do?” This time the question tears from my throat like a growl. I throw myself toward him, struggling against Peter’s grip, though his hands chafe. “What did you do?” I scream. “You die, I die too” Tobias looks over his shoulder at me. “I asked you not to do this. You made your decision. These are the repercussions.
Veronica Roth
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
Marianne Williamson
Children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.
Leslye Walton
Passion is a feeling that tells you: this is the right thing to do. Nothing can stand in my way. It doesn't matter what anyone else says. This feeling is so good that it cannot be ignored. I'm going to follow my bliss and act upon this glorious sensation of joy.
Wayne W. Dyer
I've had it with being nice, understanding, fair and hopeful. I feel like being negative all day. The chip on my shoulder could sink the QE2. I've got an attitude problem and nobody better get in my way...I'm in a bad mood and the whole stupid little world is gonna pay!
John Waters
Life is short. If you doubt me, ask a butterfly. Their average life span is a mere five to fourteen days.
Ellen DeGeneres
The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek therefore, not to find out Who You Are, but seek to determine Who You Want to Be.
Neale Donald Walsch
Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success, every detection of what is false directs you toward what is true, every trial exhausts some tempting form of error, and every adversity will only hide, for a time, your path to peace and fulfillment.
Og Mandino
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Elmore Leonard
Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.
Zora Neale Hurston
When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. (...) You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that — then any time at all will be the right time for you.
Peter S Beagle
I hate you."I love you."You're a freak, you know that? Everyone says so. They always have."I'm trying not to be.
Stephen Chbosky
Just because someone desires you, it does not mean that they value you.Read it over.Again.Let those words resonate in your mind.
Nayyirah Waheed
People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
Emma Goldman
The best way to measure how much you've grown isn't by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track, or even your grade point average-- though those things are important, to be sure. It's what you've done with your time, how you've chosen to spend your days, and whom you've touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.
R.J. Palacio
I was born into Bolívar's labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais' Great Perhaps.
John Green
...even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonorable when it's used for selfish or cowardly reasons.- Mr. Penderwick
Jeanne Birdsall
It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
Ray Bradbury
You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.
Merce Cunningham
To be in your children's memories tomorrow,You have to be in their lives today.
Barbara Johnson
It's just that in the Deep South, women learn at a young age that when the world is falling apart around you, it's time to take down the drapes and make a new dress.
Karen Marie Moning
You know, the mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.
Jodi Picoult
If you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you'll end up miserable.
Brandon Sanderson
There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow- that, in short, we are all going.
John Green
May I share with you a formula that in my judgment will help you and help me to journey well through mortality... First, fill your mind with truth; second, fill your life with service; and third, fill your heart with love.
Thomas S. Monson
Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.
Cynthia Kersey
I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.
Anne Lamott
Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.
Louisa May Alcott
So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
Christopher McCandless
You should never assume. You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass out of you and me because that's how it's spelled.
Ellen DeGeneres
First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.
Ray Bradbury