Quotes by American Authors - Page 40

Like caterpillars our metamorphosis begins with what comes from our mouth. Caterpillars spin silk cocoons from the mouth. We speak life or death, success or failure. All transformation starts with what comes from our mouth.
Brandi L. Bates
The voice welling up out of this little man is terrific, Harry had noticed it at the house, but here, in the nearly empty church, echoing off the walnut knobs and memorial plaques and high arched rafters, beneath the tall central window of Jesus taking off into the sky with a pack of pastel apostles for a launching pad, the timbre is doubled, richer, with a rounded sorrowful something Rabbit hadn't noticed hitherto, gathering and pressing the straggle of guests into a congregation, subduing any fear that this ceremony might be a farce. Laugh at ministers all you want, they have the words we need to hear, the ones the dead have spoken.
John Updike
Training is an active, dynamic process lived out daily in all areas of life- not a rote exercise in memorizing verses and going to church every week.
Craig Groeschel
You don't get to turn someone's sanctuary into an unsafe space.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions.
Eugene H. Peterson
The task of liturgy is to order the life of the holy community following the text of Holy Scripture. It consists of two movements. First it gets us into the sanctuary, the place of adoration and attention, listening and receiving and believing before God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives ordered to all aspects of the revelation of God in Jesus.Then it gets us out of the sanctuary into the world into places of obeying and loving ordering our lives as living sacrifices in the world to the glory of God. There is a lot involved, all the parts of our lives out on the street participating in the work of salvation.
Eugene H. Peterson
Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture. I want to use the word 'liturgy' to refer to this intent and practice of the church insofar as it pulls everything in and out of the sanctuary into a life of worship, situates everything past and present coherently as participation in the revelation written for us in Scripture. Instead of limiting liturgy to the ordering of the community in discrete acts of worship, I want to use it in this large and comprehensive way, the centuries-deep and continents-wide community, spread out in space and time, as Christians participate in actions initiated and formed by the words in this book - our entire existence understood liturgically, that is connectedly in the context of the three personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and furnished with the text of the Holy Scripture.
Eugene H. Peterson
[As a young man ] I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco. I stopped going on Sunday mornings and watched the birds with my father instead.
James D. Watson
The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.
Henry David Thoreau
I wrote that certain things were leaving me nauseated. I said that judges made me feel that way. Not most of them but all of them. I said that you for example, the judge I'm writing this to, made me feel nauseated. The nausea came from understanding that people produced by every conceivable advantage got to decide whether someone like Jalen lived or died and what was worse was they never fucking seemed to decide that the person should live, that a person's life, any person, was more important than whether some fat fuck at a country club thought you were hard enough on crime or whether you continue to get sufficient reelection campaign contributions you worthless retarded piece of shit. Why should you be allowed to decide anything beyond what you have for lunch you mental infant?
Sergio de la Pava
No more self-defeating device could be discovered than the one society has developed in dealing with the criminal. It proclaims his career in such loud and dramatic forms that both he and the community accept the judgment as a fixed description. He becomes conscious of himself as a criminal, and the community expects him to live up to his reputation, and will not credit him if he does not live up to it.
Frank Tannenbaum
Everywhere on our planet one hand greases another. Often it's done with a bloated face, wearing a serpent's smile. M.Sullivan
Mike Sullivan
Okay, I’ve got the hidden microphones with GPS here,” Agent Bounter said. “Let’s get one on you.”“Now, sir?”
“The Russians are on the radar. It’s time.”As Bounter turned to pick up the tiny button-size microphone, Grant clenched his hands into fists, his anticipation bui
Jennifer Lane
Aren’t those vegetables sexy, Rog?” Grant cooed, trying to hold in laughter. “Sexy, sexy veggies. You two need to go on lots of dates together.
Jennifer Lane
Grant glanced down at his khaki jacket. Since he’d slipped on the US Navy uniform in Agent Bounter’s office, he’d felt a confident swagger possess him. His spine lengthened, and his shoulders retracted. He should’ve been wearing this every day, not the stupid dress shirt and slacks of a lounge singer.
Jennifer Lane
Her recoil confirmed the disgust Grant felt inside. Who was he kidding, trying to put Vladimir and Andrei behind bars? He was no different from his father. Then he remembered Sophie’s
Jennifer Lane
Speaking of banging, when’s McSailor getting home?” Kirsten’s smirk was the size of Texas.Sophie had to smile. “Crude. You’re crude, roomie.
Jennifer Lane
Sometimes I feel like a normal person. Sometimes I forget I’m on parole, that I’m not really free.
Jennifer Lane
interview from Ross E. Cheit about The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford University Press, February 2014).In the foreword to your book you mention a book titled Satan’s Silence was the catalyst for your research. Tell us about that. Cheit: Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker solidified the witch-hunt narrative in their 1995 book, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, which included some of these cases. I was initially skeptical of the book’s argument for personal reasons. It seemed implausible to me that we had overreacted to child abuse because everything in my own personal history said we hadn’t. When I read the book closely, my skepticism increased. Satan’s Silence has been widely reviewed as meticulously researched. As someone with legal training, I looked for how many citations referred to the trial transcripts. The answer was almost none. Readers were also persuaded by long list of [presumably innocent] convicted sex offenders to whom they dedicated the book. If I’m dedicating a book to fifty-four people, all of whom I think have been falsely convicted, I’m going to mention every one of these cases somewhere in the book. Most weren’t mentioned at all beyond that dedication. The witch-hunt narrative is so sparsely documented that it’s shocking.
Ross Cheit
The witch-hunt narrative is a really popular story that goes like this: Lots of people were falsely convicted of child sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s. And they were all victims of a witch-hunt. It just doesn’t happen to line up with the facts when you actually look at the cases themselves in detail. But it’s a really popular narrative — I think it’s absolutely fair to say that’s the conventional wisdom. It’s what most people now think is the uncontested truth, and those cases had no basis in fact. And what 15 years of painstaking trial court research (says) is that that’s not a very fair description of those cases, and in fact many of those cases had substantial evidence of abuse. The witch-hunt narrative is that these were all gross injustices to the defendant. In fact, what it looks like in retrospect is the injustices were much more often to children.
Ross Cheit
When you get to Hell, I'll be sitting in the hot tub waiting.
Kristen Houghton
A few years ago I started an online flirtation with a high school flame, Andy. Things got weird and I called it off and two months later...Versace was dead...dead.
Ryan Murphy
I stood behind the man’s chair, my blade at his throat.t“Why do you do it?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t answer. “Kill people, and blow up buildings, and sell drugs?”tIt was what they all did. Committed crimes. That was why I killed them.t“You’re a criminal, a terrorist, a danger. And I have been asked to take you out.” I told him. tI was legend now, yet he asked the same question all the others did.t“What is your name?”tMy sensitive ears tuned out the slit as my sword cut his neck.tI walked around the chair to see his face. I watched as his eyes–slowly at first–changed from blue to milky white. His skin went pale.tAnd as I heard him take his last breath, I ducked in so my lips hovered at his ear, and whispered, “My name, is Sharden.
Alysha Speer
Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal
Murray N. Rothbard
Rectory always sounded to me like a place you would find a proctologist.
Jeff Lindsay
In my life long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workday lives of meaningless toin and suffering.
Jeff Lindsay
Criminals should be punished, not fed pastries.
Lemony Snicket
Act NOW on those ideas! As they say, you snooze you lose. Or as I say, if you BEGIN you WIN.
Richie Norton
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Be perfectly okay with being who YOU are. Fully embrace yourself, flaws and all. Love yourself right where you are. Strive to do better, but don’t beat yourself up for every shortcoming that you may have. Be brave in your journey! Hold your head up high, and keep moving forward.
Stephanie Lahart
And like a colorful bloom of temporary lights in the sky, you will shine.
Chad Sugg
A distant love that waits to be together, is by far the most difficult relationship. It's like lighting a candle, and adoring the long flame and robust glow. Until time sets in like wax, overflowing deeper and deeper into the wick, leaving a sparse flame struggling to live. This is where most distant relationships fade, with the wax smothering the flame. This kind of relationship takes patience, hope, unconditional love, trust and strength, all centered around God. If the flame endures to the end, and the two come together, only then will it feel as if the candle was tipped and all the wax came pouring out, when the flame is revived, long and glowing again.
Anthony Liccione
The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.
Laurie Halse Anderson
In general, I call her every night, and we talk for an hour, which is forty-five minutes of me, and fifteen minutes of her stirring her tea, which she steeps with the kind of Zen patience that would make Buddhists sit up in envy and then breathe through their envy and then move past their envy.
Aimee Bender
Sorrow and strife comes to all persons. Mature people expect hardships and setbacks and patiently and determinedly work to accomplish their goals. Immature people lash out in anger and frustration when circumstances conspire to blunt their short-term objectives.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Personally, I'd rather grow old alone than in the company of anyone I've met so far. I don't experience myself as lonely, incomplete, or unfulfilled, but I don't talk about that much. It seems to piss people off--especially men. (Kinsey Millhone)
Sue Grafton
The wise oyster stays in its shell.
Marty Rubin
Being single is like being an artist, not because creating a functional single life is an art form, but because it requires the same close attention to one's singular needs, as well as the will and focus to fulfill them. Just as the artist arranges her life around her creativity, sacrificing conventional comforts and even social acceptance, sleeping and eating according to her own rhythms, so that her talent thrives above all else, nurtured the way a child might be, so a single person has to think hard to decipher what makes her happiest and most fulfilled.
Kate Bolick
How can you make an informed decision about whether to save the world if you never leave your tiny part of it?
Shaun David Hutchinson
Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.
Wayne Cordeiro
Thats what happens to Snow in Texas, lady. It freaking MELTS!!" Leo Valdez- The Lost Hero
Rick Riordan
Once, when a government agent arrived at her home with a ream of paper that documented the case against her, she asked if that law was more powerful than natural law. He told her that, yes, it was a powerful law, the law of the federal government. Then, she said, it should be more powerful that this, and she threw it into her woodstove.
Alan S. Kesselheim
Earth processes that seem trivially slow in human time can accomplish stunning work in geologic time. Let the Colorado River erode its bed by 1/100th of an inch each year (about the thickness of one of your fingernails.) Multiply it by six million years, and you’ve carved the Grand Canyon. Take the creeping pace of which the continents move (about two inches per year on average, or roughly as fast as your fingernails grow). Stretch that over thirty million years, and a continent will travel nearly 1,000 miles. Stretch that over a few billions years, and continents will have time to wander from the tropics to the poles and back, crunching together to assemble super-continents, break apart into new configurations- and do all of that again several times over. Deep time, it could be said, is Nature’s way of giving the Earth room for its history. The recognition of deep time might be geology’s paramount contribution to human knowledge.
Keith Meldahl
Life is plenty pointless. We're all put here on this earth, such a minuscule thing, really. This tiny Earth, in the midst of an ever-larger universe. We were put here for reasons unbeknownst to us, reasons that may not even exist. And, above all that, we try so hard. People work to discover things, to try to create the greatest new thing, to learn everything, to find answers. But those answers are pointless. Because one day, this world will end. And whatever mark you may have thought you left will vanish, like it was never even there. And that, my friends, is the meaning of life.
Payton Webb
Parts of our genome simply cannot survive a situation where the environment suffers from the full overload of toxins we currently live in.
Kat Lahr
Electrical earth (ground) cables are all energized with radio frequencies (RF). Generally the further away from the ground rod you go, the more RF that you will find.
Steven Magee
Fifteen years ago I had an odd dream. In it, a medicinal plant that I was interested in, an Usnea lichen that is ubiquitous on trees throughout the world, told me that while it was good for healing human lungs it was primarily a medicine for the lungs of the planet, the trees. When I awoke, I was amazed. It had never occurred to me in quite that way that plants have some life and purpose outside their use to human beings.
Stephen Harrod Buhner
I’m not made for city streets. My brogans drop soil from the field behind me, each grain of dirt like a seed revealing who I am. My heart belongs in the country. I’m a farmer, and I was shaped in the fields.
Brenda Sutton Rose
The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch's brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a newfound talent to work together to protect the global environment.
Carl Sagan
Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage—but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afraid. To love life is, of course, a wonderful thing, but not on this day of all days.
Paul Hoffman
If she is to love life and freedom and be brave then she must learn to let go. To see beauty without clinging to it, to feel pain without holding it hostage, and to feel love without worry of losing it.
G.G. Renee Hill
Yielding your inner life to God will empower you to live the kind of outer life that honors the Lord and blesses others.
Jim George
Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. Rim
Set yourself free. Realize you already have everything you need and don’t need anything else.
Mabel Katz
When I'm focusing on what's important to God, I live differently. I invest my time differently.
Craig Groeschel
If you want to be different, if you want to be better than normal, then you must live differently.
Craig Groeschel
You must long for God more than normal. You must be willing to live to give, not live to gain.
Craig Groeschel
To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one's own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one's own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Even if surviving wasn't simple, or easy, or fair.Even if he could never be human.He wanted the chance to matter.He wanted to live.
Victoria Schwab
As we drew nearer the green shore the bearded man told me of that land, the Land of Zar, where dwell all the dreams and thoughts of beauty that come to men once and then are forgotten. And when I looked upon the terraces again I saw that what he said was true, for among the sights before me were many things I had once seen through the mists beyond the horizon and in the phosphorescent depths of the ocean.
H.P. Lovecraft
That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, 'Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It's just fun to think about.' And then, as though in trances, the people would really do it--have slaves fight each other to death in the Colosseum, or burn people alive in the public square for holding opinions which were locally unpopular, or build factories whose only purpose was to kill people in industrial quantities, or to blow up whole cities, and on and on.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.