Quotes by American Authors - Page 39

If it wasn’t for all those silver wings spread out to help you on your journey, you would’a been dead or someplace screamin’ in a nut house a long time ago.
Aberjhani
God is the comic shepherd who gets more of a kick out of that one lost sheep once he finds it again than out of the ninety and nine who had the good sense not to get lost in the first place. God is the eccentric host who, when the country-club crowd all turned out to have other things more important to do than come live it up with him, goes out into the skid rows and soup kitchens and charity wards and brings home a freak show. The man with no legs who sells shoelaces at the corner. The old woman in the moth-eaten fur coat who makes her daily rounds of the garbage cans. The old wino with his pint in a brown paper bag. The pusher, the whore, the village idiot who stands at the blinker light waving his hand as the cars go by. They are seated at the damask-laid table in the great hall. The candles are all lit and the champagne glasses filled. At a sign from the host, the musicians in their gallery strike up "Amazing Grace.
Frederick Buechner
God is gracious to always give a warning before He sends judgment.
Jim George
Grace will meet you in the valley, and her song will carry you home on the wind to another sky filled with ethereal beauty unfolding and love everlasting.
Shannon L. Alder
I think timing is better left up to God to decide then religious leaders. I once met a man that brought his wife flowers in the hospital. They held hands, kissed and were as affectionate as any cute couple could be. They were both in their eighties. I asked them how long they were married. I expected them to tell me fifty years or longer. To my surprise, they said only five years. He then began to explain to me that he was married thirty years to someone that didn’t love him, and then he remarried a second time only to have his second wife die of cancer, two years later. I looked at my patient (his wife) sitting in the wheelchair next to him smiling. She added that she had been widowed two times. Both of her marriages lasted fifteen years. I was curious, so I asked them why they would even bother pursuing love again at their age. He looked at me with astonishment and said, “Do you really think that you stop looking for a soulmate at our age? Do you honestly believe that God would stop caring about how much I needed it still, just because I am nearing the end of my life? No, he left the best for last. I have lived through hell, but if I only get five years of happiness with this woman then it was worth the years of struggle I have been through.
Shannon L. Alder
We stitch together quilts of meaning to keep us warm and safe, with whatever patches of beauty and utility we have on hand.
Anne Lamott
Wisdom is an ornament of grace to the soul.
Elizabeth George
Let no one take the limited, narrow position that any of the works of man can help in the least possible way to liquidate the debt of his transgression. This is a fatal deception. If you would understand it, you must cease haggling over your pet ideas, and with humble hears survey the atonement. This matter is so dimly comprehended that thousands upon thousands claiming to be sons of God are children of the wicked one, because they will depend on their own works. God always demanded good works, the law demands it, but because man placed himself in sin where his good works were valueless, Jesus' righteousness alone can avail. Christ is able to save to the uttermost because He ever liveth to make intercession for us. All man can possibly do toward his own salvation is to accept the invitation, "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.
Ellen G. White
The sun, rising and setting in splendid colors, never grows tired of its admirers―much like a lady, aglow with grace, never grows tired of chivalrous acts or pretty flowers.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I used to move gracefully. I used to know the word grace to the center of my bones. Now I seek it every day and fall short, inevitably, every day. I lost grace.
Katherine Locke
Dignity impacts everything in your life. It affects the quality of your internal world for how you see, feel, and think about yourself.
Susan C.Young
Do you see dignity & grace as a state of emotional and spiritual being or a physical projection of courage and class? Perhaps they describe both.
Susan C.Young
Glory went to look in on her father. He lay on his right side, his face composed, intent on sleep. His hair had been brushed into a soft white cloud, like harmless aspiration, like a mist given off by the endless work of dreaming.
Marilynne Robinson
Her tone changed from shocked to curious. “How was it? Was it… different?”Sarah bit her lip, ashamed to be gossiping but feeling the strong urge to tell. “Yes,”she confided. “He’s nothing like John. Nothing like him at all.”“Really? What was different? Did he…?” Grace waved a hand as though erasing achalkboard. “Oh, forget it. I shouldn’t be asking this. But,” again her voice lowered, “is he tattooed everywhere?”Sarah knew it was wrong to talk about him like this, but her inner schoolgirl took over and she nodded, eager to share details. “He’s beautiful … like a stained glass window. And he’s really good with his … mouth.” She raised an eyebrow, giving Grace a significant look.Her friend gasped and giggled. “But isn’t it weird? Touching him?”“Skin is skin, Grace,” Sarah chided. “The tattoos are only on the surface, you know.He’s a man.” A sexy, vulnerable, intense, attractive, responsible, sweet, gentle and loving man.
Bonnie Dee
Some people's theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves.
Criss Jami
True repentance is a turning from sin . . . Humanly speaking, it is our small part in the plan of salvation. Our part is repenting. God will do the converting, the transforming, and the forgiving.
Billy Graham
Oh God, if You want me to preach, I will do it.
Billy Graham
Have you fallen into the world’s trap, following its self-indulgent goals and driven by its self-centered motives? It can happen without you even being aware of it. Make sure Christ is first in your life, and make it your goal to live according to His Word.
Billy Graham
Jesus told His disciples that the “world,” meaning the world system, the political and social order organized apart from God, will despise Christians.
Billy Graham
Next time when I dive into the territory that I had lived next to, where my sister grew up, I know what to expect. I would be ready. I would be prepared.
Erica Sehyun Song
The attraction of reading is that it allows you to live, for a few hours, as someone else—grants you access to their head, their thoughts, their secrets.
Alessandra Torre
Crying is part of the adventure
Gail Carson Levine
It was definitely a new way of life for people who had become so used to being entertained by televisions, computers and technology." -from Day After Disaster
Sara F. Hathaway
The sad thing about miracles is that they’re unique. They can’t be explained, or shared, or duplicated. And they absolutely cannot be captured and made to perform on demand. If that day ever came, our world would die for lack of wonder.
Bryan Fields
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune...” ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Lisa M. Collins
It's like you're averse to adventure.
Gayle Forman
The only woman who would wear a gown like this one, love, is one who knows the power she wields and isn’t afraid to use it.
Tamara Hughes
Evenings were peaceful, smoke settling in the quiet air to soften the dusk, lights twinkling on the ridge we would camp on tomorrow, clouds dimming the outline of our pass for the day after. Growing excitement lured my thoughts again and again to the West Ridge….There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find what I really sought was something I had left behind.
Thomas F. Hornbein
Capture your youth, while you can.
Anthony Liccione
People gravitated here for the open air, the prolific intoxicants and the visual treats. They made the deals here that were later played out elsewhere. They drank and got high. Sometimes they fought, not for money but for sport or grudge.They were the desperate and the daring, the lost and the searching. Tonight, they were his audience. Tomorrow, they would be his front line.
G.S. Jennsen
They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more.
Malcolm Cowley
Changing imagination into fiction is what I love to do.
Eveli Acosta
The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.
Helen Bevington
Some writers are born. Others learn. I was born a writer but have a lot to learn.
Donna Lynn Hope
Assuming what people want is about as controlled as using fireworks to start a fire.
Criss Jami
Testing the wrong person can prove a massive failure for the antagonist.
Carlos Wallace
The real promise in too many promises is a promise that I’m going to be disappointed.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The fear of getting knocked down is less about the pain of the fall and more about the embarrassment in having fallen. And so, to rid myself of the latter is to reduce my concern about the former, which means I just unleashed my life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I will be known forever as the Puppy who chased a cutpurse and caught fish garbage instead. My descendants will pretend I'm not in their bloodline. No – no one will want to make descendants with me. [from Beka Cooper's journal of her first day as a new Dog i.e. cop]
Tamora Pierce
The stamp is something left over from an inpatient hospital program. In some other program RELEASED used to mean a client was set free. Now it means a client is dead. Nobody wanted to special-order a stamp that said DEAD. The caseworker told me this a few years ago when the suicides started back up again. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. This is how things get recycled.
Chuck Palahniuk
Your partner may have injuries that you can't repair. Your partner may be trapped in a dark room without windows. Your life narrative might bring him more relief than an opiate. Some people make better windows than windows. Your kind words and enlightened perspective is a window of wonders to someone living in pain.pg 43
Michael Ben Zehabe
He must have stood there for a long time, making a list of all the terrible things he had done—almost killinng me was one of those thingss—and another list of all the good, heroic, brave things he had not done, and then decided that he was tired. Tired, not just of living, but of existing. Tired of being Al.
Veronica Roth
A bind is when you're quadriplegic, suicidal about that and unable to persuade your best friend to murder you.
Brian Spellman
I worked on Mauna Kea for over five years and saw my health severely degrade during that time. Thetwo long term summit workers that I knew well died of disease conditions, another worker went on tocommit suicide, and others were argumentative.
Steven Magee
It feels like someone is gripping my heart and twisting it. It feels like I can't breathe. I shut my eyes tightly against the memory that is threatening to surface. I can't br
Ashley Earley
People always, always talk about confidence, it’s supposed to be such an attractive thing. I wonder why though, why is it supposed to be such an attractive thing? When confidence hides so many other things that are so much more beautiful! When you think of being confident, you think of tucking away all those other things that you consider to be nuisances; but those nuisances make up whom you are! And those nuisances are beautiful. They are beautiful and they are you and they’re always going to be there, even when you try to cover them up! So what happens when they all come out one day? Are you going to feel like less of a person? Are the people who are supposed to love you, going to see you as less of a person? I say that it’s not about going out into the world and putting on a certain face— it’s just about going out into the world. I’ve gone out into the world! And I don’t put on that face! Or any other face, as a matter of fact! I don’t want to hide the way I play with my hair to feel more secure or the way I laugh at all the wrong times. I don’t want to hide those things because those things are a part of me. And I can still go out into the world— and all alone, too! I know so, because I’ve actually done it! So more important than confidence— is serenity and acceptance. The serenity comes from having a deep acceptance of all those little things about you that add up like the trillions of molecules and atoms you are made up of! And that’s just beautiful. Being beautiful is something rooted and strong; being confident is just a matter of putting on something that isn’t even a real part of you. Falling in love with the molecules that make up your essence is so much more attractive. And maybe that’s what confidence really means— the acceptance and belief in every single atom that you are.
C. JoyBell C.
Your posture is the key to your personal and professional foundation.
Cindy Ann Peterson
Our nonverbal behavior (including posture) gives away our inner personality and reflects our inner attitude.
Cindy Ann Peterson
How you carry yourself speaks volumes about how you feel about yourself.
Cindy Ann Peterson
Never allow yourself to become a choice in any relationship. The moment you do is when you have reduced your loved one's affections to a daily biological question: Should I take a dump here or wait till I get home?
Shannon L. Alder
I didn’t need to be a writer to know that I could. Did you have to become a penis to act like a dick?
Crystal Woods
As we age, we feel less like leaves and more like trees. We have roots that ground us and sturdy trunks that may sway, but don't break, in the wind.
Meg Jay
Empowered Women 101: A confident woman knows that forgiving is important, but sticking around for constant abuse isn't being confident; it is called being a doormat.
Shannon L. Alder
Whatever the depth of our darkness, God navigated it eons before it was dark. And whatever the duration of our nights, God was there long before it ever turned to night. Therefore, despite our frequent feelings to the contrary, there is no place we might be where God was not lovingly waiting for us an eternity before we got there.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
We're all a beautiful, wonderful work in progress....Embrace the process!
Nanette Mathews
When employees lack passion, it is nearly impossible to deliver excellent customer service. Doesn’t it make you less inclined to want to do business with them as well?
Susan C.Young
At this point in my life, beaming confidence is largely a matter of mind over bladder control
Josh Stern
The rose has toldIn one simplicityThat never lifeRelinquishes a bloomBut to bestowAn ancient confidence.
Nathalia Crane
I love my mother.My mother loves my dad.Those two facts are undeniable.I want my father to live.I want him to fight to live as long as he can.My mother wants to let him pass.She does not want him suffering anymore.She says that I am not there in the middle of the night at home, when he begs her to let him die.I say that he should not be taking the medicine that the doctor is prescribing, that it made Mike Tyson want to eat his opponents young.
JohnA Passaro
A plain, brown paper-wrapped package came in the mail recently. Upon opening it, I saw that it was a patchwork quilt about four feet by five feet. Many little scraps of cloth, carefully joined by loving hands. Two squares have suggestions of a black cassock and Roman white collar. The maker of the quilt states, “In its variety, I feel it denotes confusion and the world “mixed” up. There are dark spots for the dark times and bright squares, so, hopefully, some good and brightness will come in the future. The other pieces of cloth were of happy times, mothers and children, peaceful settings, happy things.” A note inside stated that she felt we were “scraps,”—the “scraps” that the abusive priests treated us like. They would use us as a scrap is used and then simply toss us aside. I was moved to tears. Holding it in my hands, I could almost feel others' pain and suffering, as I touched each panel. It is a magnificent work, worthy of a prize. I was deeply humbled by the receipt of the quilt. This woman got it; she really got it. This woman got it; she really got it. She has a deeper understanding of what we have gone through. It is rare.
Charles L. Bailey Jr.