20th-century Author Quotes

Name and date split in soft slate a few months obliterate. 166

The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that.

My experience has been that people who die for causes have few friends in death.

James Lee Burke

God is calling you to change the world one life at a time and one small step at a time. Begin today where you are.

Dillon Burroughs

So many people in the Western World are just automatically made ill by any sort of frank writing about sexual matters.

William S. Burroughs

If he desired to know about automobiles, he would, without question, study diligently about automobiles. If his wife desired to be a gourmet cook, she'd certainly study the art of cooking, perhaps even attending a cooking class. Yet, it never seems as obvious to him that if he wants to live in love, he must spend at least as much time as the auto mechanic or the gourmet in studying love.

Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.

Listen, no part of me is more definitive of who I am than my brain.

But what was a body? Dust, dung, urine, itches. It was the light within which was important, and it was not significant if that light endured after death, or if the soul was blinded eternally in the endless night of the suspired flesh.

Taylor Caldwell

Remembering that God is my source, we are in the spiritual position of having an unlimited bank account. Most of us never consider how powerful the creator really is. Instead, we draw limited amounts of the power available to us. We decide how powerful God is for us. We unconsciously set a limit on how much God can give us or help us. We are stingy with ourselves. And if we receive a gift beyond our imagining, we often send it back.

Or like a poet woo the Moon,
Riding an armchair for my steed,
And with a flashing pen harpoon
Terrific metaphors of speed.

The paranoiac is the exact image of the ruler. The only difference is their position in the world. One might even think the paranoiac the more impressive of the two because he is sufficient unto himself and cannot be shaken by failure.

I knew Lee Harvey Oswald, and I knew Jack Kennedy. The odds against that-one person knowing all four of those men-must be astounding.

'I could kill you like this,' Peter whispered. 'Just press and press until you're dead'.

Orson Scott Card

Rather than being afraid to ask for help, remember this: When you ask someone to help you, you are actually doing them a tremendous favor by giving them an opportunity to feel needed.

Richard Carlson

The worst misstep one can make in design is to solve the wrong problem.

That which is denied gains power, and seeks strange and unexpected forms of manifestation.

Peter J. Carroll

Life pulls softly inside your bindings. The pod glows - dear stench.

Sade has a curious ability to render every aspect of sexuality suspect, so that we see how the chaste kiss of the sentimental lover differs only in degree from the vampirish love-bite that draws blood, we understand that a disinterested caress is only quantitatively different from a disinterested flogging.

My heroines are always virgins. They never go to bed without a ring on their fingers; not until page 118 at least.

Barbara Cartland

There comes a moment in your life when, no matter what you do, you bore everybody else. There is only one way to get back the lost prestige. Dying.

Adolfo Bioy Casares

It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us

Carlos Castaneda

From age to age, Love's word rings forth, The truth is true and all is well, Unconquerable life prevails.

Everything interesting takes place in the dark; there is no doubt about it. We know nothing of the true story of the men. ―

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

They say there is a difference between actual temperature and perceived temperature, but in the bearable heaviness of being the actual measure is no doubt the weight we perceive.

Fausto Cercignani