Quotes by American Authors - Page 55

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Henry David Thoreau
People who concentrate on giving good service always get more personal satisfaction as well as better business. How can we get better service? One way is by trying to see ourselves as others do.
Patricia Fripp
Femininity appears to be one of those pivotal qualities that is so important no one can define it.
Caroline Bird
I believe that in our constant search for security we can never gain any peace of mind until we are secure in our own soul.
Margaret Chase Smith
If I could know me I could know the universe.
Shirley Maclaine
Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves their abilities their frailties and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.
Sydney J. Harris
To pursue yourself is an interesting and absorbing thing to do. Once you have caught the scent of a hidden being your own hidden being you won't readily be deflected from the tracking down of it.
Cynthia Propper Seton
The basic difference between being assertive and being aggressive is how our words and behavior affect the rights and well-being of others.
Sharon Anthony Bower
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it but that it is a moral imperative that we have it. Then is when we join the fashionable madmen and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land and then is when we are in bad trouble.
Joan Didion
You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you!
Isadora Duncan
Don't confuse being stimulating with being blunt.
Barbara Walters
Beware of allowing a tactless word rebuttal a rejection to obliterate the whole sky.
Anaïs Nin
A gossip is one who talks to you about others a bore is one who talks to you about himself and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
Lisa Kirk
Minimum information given with maximum politeness.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.
Gertrude Stein
Silence and reserve will give anyone a reputation for wisdom.
Myrtle Reed
The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness.
Julia Ward Howe
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
Lillian Hellman
Next to entertaining or impressive talk a thoroughgoing silence manages to intrigue most people.
Florence Hurst Harriman
Talk uses up ideas. ... Once I have spoken them aloud they are lost to me dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them like bulbs in the rich soil of silence do they grow.
Doris Grumbach
A story is told as much by silence as by speech.
Susan Griffin
Talking too much too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster.
Meg Greenfield
It was enough just to sit there without words.
Louise Erdrich
Leaders can be moral-and they should be moral-without imposing their morality on others.
Geraldine Ferraro
The only people who would be in government are those who care more about people than they do about power.
Millicent Fenwick
When one clings to the myth of superiority one must constantly overlook the virtues and abilities of others.
Anne Wilson Schaef
The highest result of education is tolerance.
Helen Keller
There is space within sisterhood for likeness and difference for the subtle differences that challenge and delight there is space for disappointment- and surprise.
Christine Downing
There is no hierarchy of values by which one culture has the right to insist on all its own values and deny those of another.
Margaret Mead
That is always our problem not how to get control of people but how all together we can get control of a situation.
Mary Parker Follett
He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.
Taylor Caldwell
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
Marianne Moore
Don't give advice unless you're asked.
Amy Alcott
This is the gist of what I know: Give advice and buy a foe.
Phyllis McGinley
For fast-acting relief try slowing down.
Lily Tomlin
Transformation also means looking for ways to stop pushing yourself so hard professionally or inviting so much stress.
Gail Sheehy
Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect you have enough.
Gail Sheehy
Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking you are boring somebody.
Helen Gurley Brown
Without discipline there's no life at all.
Katharine Hepburn
It isn't until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are-not necessarily a religious feeling but deep down the spirit within-that you can begin to take control.
Oprah Winfrey
Superior people never make long visits.
Marianne Moore
Gammy used to say "Too much scrubbing takes the life right out of things."
Betty MacDonald
A woman that's too soft and sweet is like tapioca pudding-fine for them as likes it.
Osa Johnson
Never eat more than you can lift.
Miss Piggy
Sweet words are like honey a little may refresh but too much gluts the stomach.
Anne Bradstreet
If you can't write your message in a sentence you can't say it in an hour.
Dianna Booher
It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.
Erma Bombeck
I will write of him who fights and vanquishes his sins who struggles on through weary years against himself ... and wins.
Caroline Begelow LeRow
When you borrow trouble you give your peace of mind as security.
Myrtle Reed
Too often in ironing out trouble someone gets scorched.
Marcelene Cox
A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.
Ida Tarbell
I listen and give input only if somebody asks.
Barbara Bush
Everybody's business is nobody's business and nobody's business is my business.
Clara Barton
A little kingdom I possess Where thoughts and feelings dwell And very hard the task I find Of governing it well.
Louisa May Alcott
You must have discipline to have fun.
Julia Child
Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.
Marie Chapian
To put a tempting face aside when duty demands every faculty is a lesson which takes most men longest to learn.
Gertrude Atherton
To be confident is to act in faith.
Bernard Bynion
Never bend your head. Hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
Helen Keller
Glamour is assurance. It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way mentally and physically and in appearance and that whatever the occasion or the situation you are equal to it.
Marlene Dietrich