Quotes by American Authors - Page 70

There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time and all things in succession. That which grows slowly endures.
J.G. Holland
Once a man would spend a week patiently waiting if he missed a stage coach but now he rages if he misses the first section of a revolving door.
Simeon Strunsky
Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold and from stake to stake.
Wendell Phillips
Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear-end collision and Man will never know that what hit him from behind was Man.
James Thurber
The simple faith in progress is not a conviction belonging to strength but one belonging to acquiescence and hence to weakness.
Norbert Wiener
Progress might have been all right once but it's gone on too long.
Ogden Nash
The century on which we are entering can be and must be the century of the common man.
Henry A. Wallace
The fundamental magic of flying is a miracle that has nothing to do with any of its practical purposes - purposes of speed accessibility and convenience - and will not change as they change.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Flight is the only true sensation that men have achieved in modern history.
James Dickey
Once you sink that first stake they'll never make you pull it up.
Robert Moses
And from the discontent of man The world's best progress springs.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
This world of ours is a new world in which the unit of knowledge the nature of human communities the order of society the order of ideas the very notions of society and culture have changed and will not return to what they have been in the past. What is new is new not because it has never been there before but because it has changed in quality.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Progress far from consisting in change depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.
George Santayana
If it is to be It is up to me.
William H. Johnson
My agent gets 10 percent of everything I get except the blinding headaches.
Fred Allen
I hate being placed on committees. They are always having meetings at which half are absent and the rest late.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never owned a car.
Carrie Snow
When asked to contribute ten dollars to a lawyer's funeral I said: "Here's fifty. Bury five of them."
Melvin Helitzer
I'm a concert pianist. That's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment.
Oscar Levant
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
Daniel Boorstin
An actor's a guy who if you ain't talking about him ain't listening.
Marlon Brando
A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
H.L. Mencken
She used to be a schoolteacher but she has no class now.
Fred Allen
Few great men could pass personnel.
Paul Goodman
America has not always been kind to its artists and scholars. Somehow the scientists always seem to get the penthouse while the arts and humanities get the basement.
Lyndon Johnson
Ask a writer what he thinks about critics and the answer you get is similar to what you get when you ask a lamppost how he feels about dogs.
Bert Sugar
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead Spenser is dead so is Milton so is Shakespeare and I'm not feeling so well myself.
Mark Twain
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Robert Benchley
I'm a writer. I write checks. They're not very good.
Wendy Liebman
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.
John Steinbeck
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
Ogden Nash
It's amazing how important your job is when you want the day off - and how unimportant it is when you want a raise.
Robert Orben
Vice president: That's the title given to a corporate manager instead of a raise.
James Humes
My brother-in-law had to give up his last job because of illness. His boss became sick of him.
Henny Youngman
Most of the men sitting in first class on an airplane have really boring jobs.
Rita Rudner
Managing is getting paid for home runs someone else hits.
Casey Stengel
Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there I go to work.
Robert Orben
Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.
George Burns
Difficulties exist to be surmounted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happiness is the overcoming of not unknown obstacles toward a known goal.
L. Ron Hubbard
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has overcome trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington
Can it be that man is essentially a being who loves to conquer difficulties a creature whose function is to solve problems?
Gorham Munson
The harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly 'tis dearness only that gives everything it's value.
Thomas Paine
No man will succeed unless he is ready to face and overcome difficulties and is prepared to assume responsibilities.
William J. H. Boetcker
Life is the acceptance of responsibilities or their evasion it is a business of meeting obligations or avoiding them. To every man the choice is continually being offered and by the manner of his choosing you may fairly measure him.
Ben Ames Williams
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down these women together ought to be able to turn it right side up again.
Sojourner Truth
All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them but confront them.
William F. Halsey
There is no movement without our own resistance.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
I'll have to as you say take a stand do something toward shaking up that system. ... Despair ... is too easy an out.
Paule Marshall
I used to believe that marriage would diminish me reduce my options. That you had to be someone less to live with someone else when of course you have to be someone more.
Candice Bergen
We must look for the opportunity in every difficulty instead of being paralyzed at the thought of the difficulty in every opportunity.
Walter E. Cole
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
Henry J. Kaiser
When you can't solve the problem manage it.
Dr. Robert H. Schuller
There is no other solution to a man's problems but the day's honest work the day's honest decisions the day's generous utterance and the day's good deed.
Clare Boothe Luce
When you approach a problem strip yourself of preconceived opinions and prejudice assemble and learn the facts of the situation make the decision which seems to you to be the most honest and then stick to it.
Chester Bowles
You can surmount the obstacles in your path if you are determined courageous and hard-working. Never be fainthearted. Be resolute but never bitter.... Permit no one to dissuade you from pursuing the goals you set for yourselves. Do not fear to pioneer to venture down new paths of endeavor.
Ralph J. Bunche
What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises others make the decision.
Jeannette Rankin
You often get a better hold upon a problem by going away from it for a time and dismissing it from your mind altogether.
Dr. Frank Crane
A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
Charles F. Kettering