Quotes by American Authors - Page 3391

The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.
Joseph Campbell
That woman doesn't have the sense God gave a retarded flea.
Nora Roberts
Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.
John Grogan
Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be. We shouldn't waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.
Colleen Hoover
Dancers are the athletes of God.
Albert Einstein
Life is such a glorious trauma, is it not?
J.R. Ward
To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly…but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airport gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.
David Foster Wallace
Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.
Gayle Forman
Tristan was silent for a few moments, looking at the leaves before them. "Life isn't about the past and the future. It's about today." He paused. "It's about five minutes from now and two seconds ago. It's moments, you know? Not years. Years aren't what define us.
Chelsea Fine
But what is life if you don't live it?
James Patterson
Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?" "What's that?""The world didn't come to an end.
Charles M. Schulz
It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.
Anna Wintour
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
Peter Stone
When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
Brené Brown
Don't wish it was easier wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom
Jim Rohn
Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end.
Saul D. Alinsky
Dead people can be our heroes because they cant disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.
Veronica Roth
To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.
Reba McEntire
Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John Updike
Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.
Robin Hobb
I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.
Sarah Dessen
Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.
Orson Scott Card
There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life.
Kurt Cobain
I always knew, on some level, that I wouldn't live long. It's simply not written in my stars.
Marie Lu
A man must find time for himself. Time is what we spend our lives with. If we are not careful we find others spending it for us. . . . It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and to ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?' . . . If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time—the stuff of life.
Carl Sandburg
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana)I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Dale Carnegie
Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can.
Douglas Pagels
Life's a freaking mess. In fact, I'm going to tell Sarah we need to start a new philosophical movement: messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life. Because Gram's right, there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. It's like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, "That's it! That's it!" to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.
Jandy Nelson
I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.
John Green
It's paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.
Andy Rooney
Isn't it strange that I know you'd risk your life to save mine, but I don't even know what your favorite color is?
Suzanne Collins
What kind of life can you have in a house without books?
Sherman Alexie
It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be...
Bob Dylan
Try patting them on the back or shoulder and telling them everything is going to be fine. Lots of times when girls cry, they don't want you to fix the problem, they just want to be consoled.
Kiera Cass
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Bill Watterson
In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
Tom Robbins
Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.
Ransom Riggs
Keep your mind open. The meaning of things lies in how people perceive them. The same thing could mean different meanings to the same people at different times.
Roy T. Bennett
Sometimes letting go is simply changing the labels you place on an event. Looking at the same event with fresh eyes.
Steve Maraboli
If you fuel your journey on the opinions of others, you are going to run out of gas.
Steve Maraboli
Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create - this is man.
John Steinbeck
Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.
Jeannette Walls
The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.
Leo Babauta
The connections we make in the course of a life--maybe that's what heaven is.
Fred Rogers
There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.
Audrey Niffenegger
In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.
Ansel Adams
Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
All paths are present, always... and we can but choose among them.
Jacqueline Carey
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
John von Neumann
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
Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me.
A.W. Tozer
What a waste my life would be without all the beautiful mistakes I've made.
Alice Bag
It’s probably my job to tell you life isn’t fair, but I figure you already know that. So instead, I’ll tell you that hope is precious, and you’re right not to give up.
C.J. Redwine
I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories... water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;Thy fate is the common fate of all,Into each life some rain must fall
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we've got 24 hours each.
Christopher Rice
All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.
Anaïs Nin
Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.
Brian Tracy
Love yourself. Forgive yourself. Be true to yourself. How you treat yourself sets the standard for how others will treat you.
Steve Maraboli