Quotes by American Authors - Page 66

Well, as Hannah Arendt famously said, there can be a banal aspect to evil. In other words, it doesn't present always. I mean, often what you're meeting is a very mediocre person. But nonetheless, you can get a sort of frisson of wickedness from them. And the best combination of those, I think, I describe him in the book, is/was General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina, who I met in the late 1970s when the death squad war was at its height, and his fellow citizens were disappearing off the street all the time. And he was, in some ways, extremely banal. I describe him as looking like a human toothbrush. He was a sort of starch, lean officer with a silly mustache, and a very stupid look to him, but a very fanatical glint as well. And, if I'd tell you why he's now under house arrest in Argentina, you might get a sense of the horror I felt as I was asking him questions about all this. He's in prison in Argentina for selling the children of the rape victims among the private prisoners, who he kept in a personal jail. And I don't know if I've ever met anyone who's done anything as sort of condensedly horrible as that.
Christopher Hitchens
If evil had a laugh, she thought it would sound like his.
Nenia Campbell
His voice was low, and I think he would've been hot if he weren't radiating that air of "I Am Super Evil--No, Really--And Not In The Sexy Way.
Rachel Hawkins
The daggers of silence last longer than anything ever spoken.
Shannon L. Alder
The world we suggest is a new wild west. A sensuous evil world. Strange and haunting, the path of the sun…
Jim Morrison
But that I should have ended up in a place like this seems too custom-made a nightmare to be the work of mere ill fortune.
Zoë Heller
The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.
Robert Penn Warren
Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us downagain.Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we aredoomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of findingperfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won'tbe disappointed."If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. Butafter all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted amountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowedto myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, notGod, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, ordominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, totake what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'dbeen kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed,deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now.
V.C. Andrews
If we were always given a choice as to every path presented us in life, a multitude of roads leading to priceless treasures would forever go untraveled.Be grateful for your adversities. From toil and triumph evolves a life worth li
Richelle E. Goodrich
But something-luck, fate, conspiracy, whatever you want to call it-has thrown us together." He leaned forward, his gaze never leaving her face. "Of all the crazy places in the world, here we are, at the same table, in the same dirty Vietnamese cafe. And..." He paused, his brown eyes warm, his crooked smile a fleeting glimmer in his seriousness. "I'm beginning to think it's time we gave in and followed this crazy script. Time we followed our instincts.
Tess Gerritsen
The first verse that comes to mind that refutes all of Calvin’s points is “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Whoever means whoever. Not just some, not just the elect; that means that anyone who wants to come to God and repent may do so. There is not a certain group that is predestined for hell and they can't do anything about it. How then would God be just? Knowing God’s nature, and that he IS love, I simply cannot believe that and believe it to be a completely false teaching.
Lisa Bedrick
And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.
Jennifer E. Smith
It's the way we deal with what fate hands us that defines who we are.
Lisa Graff
I wish I knew how to get you back. And apparently fate won't let me give up"From Central Park Song: a Screenplay
Zack Love
Such ordeals always strike one with their strangeness, their digression from the normal flow of events, and often provoke a universal protest: "Why me?" Be sure that this is not a question but an outcry. The person who screams it has been instilled with an astonishing suspicion that he, in fact, has been the perfect subject for a very specific "weird," a tailor-made fate, and that a prior engagement, in all its weirdness, was fulfilled at the appointed time and place.
Thomas Ligotti
Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a coincidence is just a coincidence.
Stephen King
He had the strangest feeling come over him, which he'd never before known. Like he was meeting his best friend, for the first time. It was recognition mixed with relief...but also some amount of joy. Like, "Oh, there you are! It's so great to meet you finally! I've missed you!
Elizabeth Gannon
Warner. A white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. A fair - skinned boy with gold hair, the leader of Sector 45. It was always him. All along . The link.
Tahereh Mafi
That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.
Anna Godbersen
Grace is not a doctrine or a religion. It is a person, Jesus Christ.
John Paul Warren
We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.
Dean Koontz
Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
We are no longer under the 'Law', but rather the Grace of God in Christ."~R. Alan Woods [2013]
R. Alan Woods
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
There are many things evil people can take from you. However, they can never steal your ability to laugh and laugh loud.
Shannon L. Alder
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
You can’t fix who you are on your own, but God is in the business of transforming broken girls into beautiful trophies of His grace.
Paula Hendricks
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
The tragedy of sin reached its crescendo when God in Christ became sin . . .He was offering Himself as the sacrifice required by the justice of God if man was to be redeemed.
Billy Graham
Man got into difficulty when he lifted his will against God’s. He gets out of trouble when he bows to the divine superiority, when he repents and says humbly: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Man’s extremity then becomes God’s opportunity.
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
Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!
Tennessee Williams
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
Is there a place you can go to break away for a little while? If you haven't yet built your tree house, it's never too late to start.
Gina Greenlee
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
You’re as lovely as a flower in the stark of winter… Your hair is the color of wheat under the midday sun, and your eyes—”“Yes, yes. My eyes are like the sea or the sky or some such nonsense,” she quipped with a laugh, the lilting sound like the finest music, better than anything he could ever play.
Tamara Hughes
He’d do what was best for her. He’d take her to safety and send her back home to a bright future…with a more honorable man than him. The stick broke in his hand, and he muttered an oath. All he wanted was for Amelia to be safe and happy, dammit. That and to beat every honorable man in England into the dust.
Tamara Hughes
I'm going home." - Celeste"To never return?" - Uway"Yes, show me the way to never return." - CelesteALL LIGHT WILL FALL
Almney King
Before I knew it, I was once again being whisked down the hallways at the new hospital into an even bigger room, one that, unbeknownst to me, would be my home for what would feel like a long, long time.
Jennifer Starzec