Quotes by American Authors - Page 3399

There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.
John Green
If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's.
Joseph Campbell
I think that you’ve got to make something that pleases you and hope that other people feel the same way.
Thomas Keller
Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls...are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.
James Patterson
E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.
Anne Lamott
The world changes, we do not, therein lies the irony that kills us.
Anne Rice
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life
Jack Kerouac
Life is nothing without a little chaos to make it interesting.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
The Laughing Heartyour life is your lifedon’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.be on the watch.there are ways out.there is a light somewhere.it may not be much light butit beats the darkness.be on the watch.the gods will offer you chances.know them.take them.you can’t beat death butyou can beat death in life, sometimes.and the more often you learn to do it,the more light there will be.your life is your life.know it while you have it.you are marvelousthe gods wait to delightin you.
Charles Bukowski
What other people think and say about you is none of your business. The most destructive thing you would ever do is to believe someone else's opinion of you. You have to stop letting other people's opinions control you.
Roy T. Bennett
The comfort zone is a psychological state in which one feels familiar, safe, at ease, and secure. You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Roy T. Bennett
Let go of something old that no longer serves you in order to make room for something new.
Roy T. Bennett
Enthusiasm can help you find the new doors, but it takes passion to open them. If you have a strong purpose in life, you don't have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.
Roy T. Bennett
Change may not always bring growth, but there is no growth without change.
Roy T. Bennett
When you take control of your attitude, you take control of your life.
Roy T. Bennett
Stop doing what is easy or popular. Start doing what is right.
Roy T. Bennett
You were born to stand out, stop trying to fit in.
Roy T. Bennett
Surround Yourself with Positive People Who Believe in Your DreamsDistance yourself from negative people who try to lower your motivation and decrease your ambition. Create space for positive people to come into your life.Surround yourself with positive people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you.
Roy T. Bennett
If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation.
Erich Fromm
Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.
Bob Dylan
You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.
Bruce Lee
EARLY BIRDOh, if you’re a bird, be an early birdAnd catch the worm for your breakfast plate.If you’re a bird, be an early early bird--But if you’re a worm, sleep late.
Shel Silverstein
Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Don't live down to expectations. Go out there and do something remarkable.
Wendy Wasserstein
Always believe in yourself and always stretch yourself beyond your limits. Your life is worth a lot more than you think because you are capable of accomplishing more than you know. You have more potential than you think, but you will never know your full potential unless you keep challenging yourself and pushing beyond your own self imposed limits.
Roy T. Bennett
Life is short. Focus on what really matters most. You have to change your priorities over time.
Roy T. Bennett
Everyone enjoys being acknowledged and appreciated. Sometimes even the simplest act of gratitude can change someone's entire day. Take the time to recognize and value the people around you and appreciate those who make a difference in your lives.
Roy T. Bennett
Beliefs are choices. First you choose your beliefs. Then your beliefs affect your choices.
Roy T. Bennett
7 Effective Ways to Make Others Feel Important 1. Use their name.2. Express sincere gratitude.3. Do more listening than talking.4. Talk more about them than about you.5. Be authentically interested.6. Be sincere in your praise.7. Show you care.
Roy T. Bennett
Make the most of the best and the best of the worst, and keep your standards high. Never settle for anything less than you deserve or are capable of achieving.
Roy T. Bennett
You learn something valuable from all of the significant events and people, but you never touch your true potential until you challenge yourself to go beyond imposed limitations.
Roy T. Bennett
I was in the biggest breakdown of my life when I stopped crying long enough to let the words of my epiphany really sink in. That whore, karma, had finally made her way around, and had just bitch-slapped me right across the face. The realization only made me cry harder.
Jennifer Salaiz
I hate to say it, but shit really does happen. You just have to get over it. Beat the hell out of it by doing things that make you happy.
J.A. Redmerski
The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it.
J.D. Stroube
It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.
Shauna Niequist
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
Ernest Hemingway
I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.
Maya Angelou
The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.
Lisa Wingate
Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.
Wendell Berry
Personally, I don’t like inherently happy people. I don’t trust them. I think there’s something seriously wrong with anyone who isn’t at least a little let down by the world.
Tiffanie DeBartolo
Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it...
Wilferd Peterson
The worst memories stick with us, while the nice ones always seem to slip through our fingers.
Rachel Vincent
Successful people have no fear of failure. But unsuccessful people do. Successful people have the resilience to face up to failure—learn the lessons and adapt from it.
Roy T. Bennett
Stop doing what is easy. Start doing what is right.
Roy T. Bennett
The beautiful journey of today can only begin when we learn to let go of yesterday.
Steve Maraboli
For everything in this journey of life we are on, there is a right wing and a left wing: for the wing of love there is anger; for the wing of destiny there is fear; for the wing of pain there is healing; for the wing of hurt there is forgiveness; for the wing of pride there is humility; for the wing of giving there is taking; for the wing of tears there is joy; for the wing of rejection there is acceptance; for the wing of judgment there is grace; for the wing of honor there is shame; for the wing of letting go there is the wing of keeping. We can only fly with two wings and two wings can only stay in the air if there is a balance. Two beautiful wings is perfection. There is a generation of people who idealize perfection as the existence of only one of these wings every time. But I see that a bird with one wing is imperfect. An angel with one wing is imperfect. A butterfly with one wing is dead. So this generation of people strive to always cut off the other wing in the hopes of embodying their ideal of perfection, and in doing so, have created a crippled race.
C. JoyBell C.
...nothing ever happens quickly (except when it does). Nothing is ever, ever easy (except when it is). And, most of all, nothing ever goes perfectly according to plan (except in the movies).
Ally Carter
I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.
Charles Bukowski
If you live each day as it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right
Steve Jobs
All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
Walt Disney Company
O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d; Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer.That you are here—that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
Walt Whitman
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Henry David Thoreau
I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Let today be the day you stop being haunted by the ghost of yesterday. Holding a grudge & harboring anger/resentment is poison to the soul. Get even with people...but not those who have hurt us, forget them, instead get even with those who have helped us.
Steve Maraboli
CALVIN:This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn't make sense. Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery?If the guy exists why doesn't he ever show himself and prove it?And if he doesn't exist what's the meaning of all this?HOBBES:I dunno. Isn't this a religious holiday? CALVIN:Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.
Bill Watterson
Be happy, but never satisfied.
Bruce Lee
I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.
Mary Anne Radmacher
Do not ask your childrento strive for extraordinary lives.Such striving may seem admirable,but it is the way of foolishness.Help them instead to find the wonderand the marvel of an ordinary life.Show them the joy of tastingtomatoes, apples and pears.Show them how to crywhen pets and people die.Show them the infinite pleasurein the touch of a hand.And make the ordinary come alive for them.The extraordinary will take care of itself.
William Martin
Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.
Criss Jami