Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Today we love what tomorrow we hate, today we seek what tomorrow we shun, today we desire what tomorrow we fear, nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of.
Tim O'Brien's book about Vietnam, The Things They Carried, has won every award, is studied in college and is considered to be definitive. But it's fiction.
The deer hovered by the trees beyond as the sounds of the ravening wolves came to them across the grass, their own senses almost frozen in impotent horror.
Today, we've got what seems to me to be binary-choice politics: black and white, ones and zeros, either you are with me or against me. How did we get here?
Just as words in their proper places form sentences, each individual strike must be done in the proper order to get the desired result: a flat stone blade.
Yet better for one of my nature to have it that way than to have life a peaceful, placid flow of quiet contentment. I must have days of rushing excitement.
A lady I will be, but a man's accessory, his handbag, no thank you. I will not be someone's ornament. I will not just be someone's honey, baby, sweetheart.
I've wished for things and never really had the chance...It's time to stop dreaming and do something about it. You've got to know what you want, then...go.
The shape and texture of fruit is sensuous and fascinating, but the true delight blossoms when you experience the flavor of these colorful gifts of nature.
They needed to share one secret after another with a beautiful woman, to peel away layer after layer, mask after mask, and still find themselves worshiped.
The most important conversations, briefings, meeting, and lectures you will ever have will be those you hold with yourself in the privacy of your own mind.
The single most outwardly identifiable trait demonstrated by a winning human being is that of positive self-expectation- which is pure and simple optimism.
Fear is being used by the political class as an excuse to accumulate more power and self-importance - and collect a lot more taxes to support their agenda.
When at last we are sure, You've been properly pilled, Then a few paper forms, Must be properly filled. So that you and your heirs, May be properly billed.
The core of character lies in each individual story person's ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly that something is important.
New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!
...our family is white as far back on the family tree as I've ever looked, and I guess I picture people white white white unless someone tells me otherwise
It was the difference between walking with a stranger and walking with your heartmate. It was the difference between working for duty and working for love.
Anyone who idolizes you is going to hate you when he discovers that you are fallible. He never forgives. He has deceived himself, and he blames you for it.
All success consists in this: You are doing something for somebody - benefiting humanity - and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this.
Woman's inaptitude for reasoning has not prevented her from arriving at truth; nor has man's ability to reason prevented him from floundering in absurdity.
I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction.
We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence,' we think of Einstein instead of humans.
Okay, so either (a) I just teleported somewhere else entirely (b) they can fold space like no one's business or (c) they are simply ignoring all the rules.
The benefits of the accomplished journey cannot be weighed in terms of perfect moments, but in terms of how this journey affects and changes our character.
The educator should do anything but advise the child to do what everybody does. He should rather rejoice when he sees in the child tendencies to deviation.
I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human.
It may be that just as tonality recurs in music and realism in painting, so the idea of liberalism recurs in politics-though each time in a different vein.
Many a man that couldn't direct ye to th' drug store on th' corner when he was thirty will get a respectful hearin' when age has further impaired his mind.
If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.
I have almost no capacity for worship. What I have is the knowledge that it is my duty to worship and worship only what I believe to be true.” May 19, 1962
One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie.
People are learning to grasp the diversity of nature, to understand its unifying principles and to sweep away the hierarchies and see the real connections.
You can make the best of it and be content, or you can complain, it makes no difference. What does it matter that human beings judge the things that exist?
When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.
The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.
Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting.
It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.
When you are writing a character, what the character says is obviously crucial. But what the character doesn't say is absolutely as important as his words.
When we read fiction, we want to get outside of ourselves and are able to see from a perspective we haven't seen through before. That can be very powerful.
I enjoyed the army reserve, and I learned a lot from it, but I also... it helped me work out that I didn't want to live in that kind of closed environment.
You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.
We all know women should have the right to vote. There are a handful of women who actually pay tax, and we need to leave the option of voting open to them.
The number of rooms in a fictional house should be inversely proportional to the years during which the couple living in that house enjoyed true happiness.
I think the path for a young writer might be one that says, "I have to accept myself, this is what I am. I can't eradicate my defects. I can work on them."
In my case, when I am trying to be "kind" I often default in a sort of toothless loving-all stance that is, actually, not kind, because it is not truthful.
Love and hate have a magical transforming power. They are the great soul changers. We grow through their exercise into the likeness of what we contemplate.