American Author Quotes

Edgar Allan Poe

Isaac Asimov

William Faulkner

Emily Dickinson

Henry David Thoreau

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ray Bradbury

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

You're a grand old flag;
You're a high-flying flag.
And forever in peace may you wave.

George M. Cohan

I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863.

William Faulkner

In the house, and on the street, how many, many feet you meet.

Not to write, for many of us, is to die. We must take ares each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory.

Summary riposte
To the dreary wail
There's no knowing what
Love is all about.
Poets know a lot.

I tasted - careless - then -
I did not know the Wine
Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now

Emily Dickinson

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Sholem Aleichem

Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence; faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.

Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.

L. Sprague de Camp

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

In November, 1964 when I was a patient at the Mayo Clinic I though seriously about killing myself.

Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize, there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining.

Henry David Thoreau

Some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour- until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

There's only us, there's only this. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other road, no other way. No day but today!

Jonathan Larson

When urbanity decays, civilization suffers and decays with it.

James Norman Hall

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Mickey Spillane

I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life - except in hope, which is by no means bankable.

Edgar Allan Poe

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Stephen Vincent Benét

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.