c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
This life has no meaning to me now. Do not grieve for me, my dear. Up until the moment I lost her, I had a wonderful life. These moments now are the ones that are hard. I’m eager to depart this world and rejoin her in the next. Then, and only then, will I finally be at peace.
— Rose Wynters, My Wolf Protector
Eternal love doesn't mean till you die, its what you call eternity, it could be a few days, heck a few hours, but its worth every second
— Seth Hawkins
Eternity is to us as time, the age to come, the continuation, the manifestation, and perfection of our present and true existence.
— Adolph Saphir, The Hidden Life, Thoughts on Communion With God
Eternity is not a super-abundance of time, but timelessness.
— Vijay Balakrishnan, Peace Inc., a novel
When I say forever,' Koschei whispered, 'I mean until the black death of the world. An Ivan means just the present moment, the flickering light of it, in a green field, his mouth on yours. He means the stretching of that moment. But forever isn't bright; it isn't like that. Forever is cold and hard and final.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
How you live today has the potential to impact all eternity.
— Dillon Burroughs
But what doesn’t die is the love we give to others. There is no end to that.
— Gloria Whelan, Small Acts of Amazing Courage
In the small central square of Ljubljana, the statue of the poet stares fixedly at something. If you follow his gaze, you will see, on the other side of the square, the face of a woman carved into the stone of one of the houses. That was where Julia had lived. Even after death, Prešeren gaze for all eternity on his Impossible love.
— Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
Susan stared at him.The blue glow in Death’s eyes gradually faded, and as the light died it sucked at her gaze so that it was dragged into the eye sockets and into the darkness beyond……which went on and on, for ever. There was no word for it. Even eternity was a human idea. Giving it a name gave it a length; admittedly, a very long one. But this darkness was what was left when eternity had given up. It was where Death lived. Alone.
— Terry Pratchett
The main thing is to stand up to the light, to joy (like our child) in the knowledge that I shall be extinguished in the light over gorse, asphalt, and sea, to stand up to time, or rather to eternity in the instant. To be eternal means to have existed.
— Max Frisch, Homo Faber
The things that matter most to me are eternal. The bonds of love shared within a family I believe to be eternal.
— Mike Ericksen, Upon Destiny's Song
There's a special place inside each and every heart where even lover & beloved are not allowed to enter as such. They dissolve & merge with eternity there.Once they enter that place, there is no coming back.
— Saurabh Sharma
In my mind, past, present and future became a blur as I stood in the middle of the celestial room, in the middle of forever. It was as if I were to take a rope that went on forever in both directions and cut it anywhere then the cut would always be exactly in the middle. And if I cut it twice I would have a beginning and an end, but eternity would continue in both directions.
— Mike Ericksen, Upon Destiny's Song
No worldly pursuit compares to the joy of experiencing the change of one soul from death to life.
— Dillon Burroughs, Thirst No More: A One-Year Devotional Journey
Every attempt to fix eternity is an escape from reality. I will be plaguing my days with moments and minutes. For ever is too far!
— Rossana Condoleo
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect.
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
everything/ that ever was still is, somewhere
— Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars
Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original. They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled.
— Louise Erdrich, The Master Butchers Singing Club
It is a pure soul who can hold true the in­no­cence and time­less­ness of pas­sion in an­oth­er soul. Each un­veil­ing the great­est pieces of the oth­er, locked to­geth­er at the heart for eter­ni­ty
— Christine Zolendz, Saving Grace
Time is clearly not our natural dimension. Thus it is that we are never really at home in time. Alternately, we find ourselves wishing to hasten the passage of time or to hold back the dawn. We can do neither, of course, but whereas the fish is at home in water, we are clearly not at home in time--because we belong to eternity.
— Neal A. Maxwell
A wind blew, and the sand around his drawing scattered. He wrapped his fingers inside his wife's, and Father Time rekindled a connection he had only ever had with her. He surrendered to that sensation and felt the final drops of their lives touch one another, like water in a cave, top meets bottom, Heaven meets Earth.As their eyes closed, a different set of eyes opened, and they rose from the ground as a shared south, up and up, a sun and a moon in a single sky.
— Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper
As Delphine watched, into her head there popped a strange notion: the idea that perhaps strongly experienced moments, as when Eva turned and the sun met her hair and for that one instant the symbol blazed out, those particular moments were eternal. Those moments actually went somewhere. Into a file of moments that existed out of time's range and could not be pilfered by God.
— Louise Erdrich, The Master Butchers Singing Club
Perhaps her only legacy would be that she had known something immortal, and while eternity may still belong to God alone, not all things were enslaved by time.
— D. Morgenstern
Eternity is the mentality for immortality. Make your mark
—  leave a positive legacy!
Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn.
— Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions and Eternity
Believers themselves are the point of continuity between creation and the new creation.
— David VanDrunen, Living in God's Two Kingdoms: A Biblical Vision for Christianity and Culture
Every whore needs a man that could turn her into a beautiful swan...
— cleopatramoneysex
Have you heard of the Children of Mae?”“The cult?” She knew of a religious group whose members went door to door, preaching the benefits of self-discipline—abstinence, celibacy or monogamy, vegetarianism—pretty much anything fun was prohibited. They had never come to Vesper’s house because her father was a butcher and probably pretty low on their list of possible converts.
— Colleen Chen, Dysmorphic Kingdom
Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.
— Allen Ginsberg
Don't walk in my head with your dirty feet.
— Leo Buscaglia, Living Loving and Learning
If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.
— Marcus Brigstocke
A solid answer to everything is not necessary. Blurry concepts influence one to focus, but postulated clarity influences arrogance.
— Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.
— Salvador Dalí
Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion.
— Mikhail Bulgakov, Heart of a Dog
History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep.
— Scott Westerfeld, Uglies
I never met your likeness. Jane: you please me, and you master me - you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced - conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph _I_ can win.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
A life isn't significant except for its impact on other lives.
— Jackie Robinson
I am your opus.
— Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems
You must speak straight so that your words may go as sunlight into our hearts.
— Cochise ("Like Ironweed")
There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims....
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray; A Moral Entertainment
He did it (listened) as the world's most charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet.
— Stephen King
We are shaped by what we're saturated in, which is why incarnation must always be paired with devotion.
— Phileena Heuertz and Darren Prince
The thing that struck me was his intensity. Whatever he was interested in he would generally carry to an irrational extreme." Jobs had honed his trick of using stares and silences to master other people. " One of his numbers was to stare at the person he was talking to. He would stare into their fucking eyeballs, ask some question, and would want a response without the other person averting their eyes.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
Like it or not, we are trendsetters. Just as every fashion model ever to strut the runway, we affect the minds of others by what we wear. With usch power it's vital to question ourselves: 'Am I an example of Christ-centeredness? Or have I just gotten comfortable in the "Christian routine" and forgotten why I've chosen to live this way?
— Hannah Farver, Uncompromising: A Heart Claimed By a Radical Love
Steve's head dropped and stared at his feet. After a weighty, uncomfortable pause, he issued a challenge that would haunt me for days. " Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?" Sculley felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. There was no response possible other than to acquiesce. " He had a uncanny ability to always get what he wanted, to size up a person and know exactly what to say to reach a person," Sculley recalled. 
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
You don't have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.
— Scott Adams
The worst thing is to have all that clout and not know your own mind. If she says her (Marilyn Monroe's)favorite color is beige, that has to be a definite possibility. Then she will be as dangerous as a Chinese Empress.
— Colin Clark, The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me: Six Months on the Set With Marilyn and Olivier
You can't truly, deeply and sustainably motivate anybody until you know what their motives are - what motivates them...?
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
If I’m surprised at where I’m at, it’s probably because I’m not listening to the reality that listening to the voices that I’ve listened to have put me here. So, maybe I should be less surprised and more disappointed.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every day we work towards creating our own persona, we may or may not realize it, but our actions & thoughts (positive or negative) adds to our reputation, people around us judge us on the basis of how much difference we make to their lives – they may or may not be connected directly to us, but still our actions or thoughts may influence their work, lives or thought process.
— ShahenshahHK
influence flows across networks up to three degrees away. What your friends’ friends eat or do or think will influence what you eat or do or think—but further connections will not.
— Anne-Marie Slaughter, The Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World
My students often ask me, 'What is sociology?' And I tell them, 'It's the study of the way in which human beings are shaped by things that they don't see.
— Sam Richards
Women work a good many miracles and I have a persuasion that they may preform even that of raising the standard of manhood by refusing to echo such sayings. Let the boys be boys the longer the better and let the young men sew their wild oats if they must, but mothers, sisters and friends may help to make the crop a small one and keep many tares from spoiling the harvest by believing and showing that they believe in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest in good women's eyes.
— Louisa May Alcott
Everyone who is a comedian or an actor or a musician have many people who influenced them. They in turn influence others. It is a great thing that is handed down. We need to know our history because our art is created from the re-imaginings from our minds with the seeds of the greats who combined as a potpourri in our heads to create something new. You can see it in my stand up. You can hear it in the music of today
— Johnny Corn
Dexter Morgan is more like disguise and influence... and everything = fake.
— Deyth Banger
Influence is having people follow you because of what you represent,
— Paul Larsen
Now I'm not saying the act of going to church fixes everything. Just as simply looking at a restaurant menu won't give you nourishment. We've got to engage with what's offered if it's going to do us any good. But putting my heart in a place to receive truth certainly got me going in a different direction.
— Lysa TerKeurst, The Best Yes: Making Wise Decisions in the Midst of Endless Demands
When I first went to prison, I made the best out of it. From the streets, I was hearing reports of Rebellions going to prison and getting do in [beat up]. Our fellas had no say, couldn’t even open up their mouths. When I went up there for the first time, I turned that prison into a place that everyone could say that the Rebellions were running it after that. I wouldn’t say I did it alone, but I help set the groundwork to give the Rebellions a say in prison. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members
— Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father
You can't make a difference, if you don't know what it is.
— R.A.Delmonico
Never underestimate the influence you have on others.
— Laurie Buchanan, PhD
You can't make a difference unless you are different.
— Chris Hodges
Sometimes the most influential thing we can do is listen.
— Bob Burg
Life is all about impact, become an influential millionaire by touching million lives.
— Chidiebere Prosper Agbugba
Writers are influenced by their upbringing and experiences. But they are also influenced by the writings of others, the major historical events of their times and the great public and literary figures to whom they are exposed.
— Joseph Kenyon
A house takes on the character of its inhabitants
—  a homeowner takes on the characteristics of the house.
The only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Welcome to the ‘Age of Influence,’ where anyone can build an audience and effect change, advocate brands, build relationships and make a difference.
— Ted Rubin
My definition of Fun Game is when everyone wins.
— Kirtida Gautam
The most important influence is all our lives are love. If we're never taught to love, then showing and accepting love becomes difficult.
— Ron Baratono
William "Boss" Tweed was in such thorough control in New York that he made money off of the report the committee printed after investigating him.
— H.W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900
The kind of people we have in Washington only trust what they think they own.
— Stephen L. Carter, Back Channel
Let your gift of positive influence to be roused and spread like a wildfire from the east to the west and from the south to the north. All nations are waiting for it.
— Euginia Herlihy
I guarantee it will change your life, but only because everything does, however small.
— Johnny Rich
You were born to influence, you were called to influence, your existence is a great influence to all nations.
— Euginia Herlihy
Your gift of positive influence will open the eyes of many people. They'll be able to recognise their personal values which will lead them to live authentic lives and achieve the impossible.
— Euginia Herlihy
The author distinguishes George Washington's leadership from that of another aristocratic general whose temperament was somewhat cold. Unlike him, Washington made the effort to at least appear to suffer with his troops.
— John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic
One excuse, could destroy a multitude of chances.
— Anthony Liccione
Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed "his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.
— Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789
Not even generals can stop the rain.
— Jeff Shaara, A Blaze of Glory
A good shepherd encourages and inspires each one that works alongside him.
— Pastor Adelaja Sunday
its size, the House was an environment in which, as one observer put it, members “could be dealt with only in bodies and droves.
— Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate
A real pastor — a good shepherd — is always concerned about the personal development of every individual person in his church.
— Pastor Adelaja Sunday
A good shepherd has a positive influence on his people through "inward work", i.e. working on them from the inside.
— Pastor Adelaja Sunday
While Lyndon Johnson was not, as his two assistants knew, a reader of books, he was, they knew, a reader of men— a great reader of men.
— Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate
You have to become a ladder that other people climb up in their path to success. If you are not ready for that, then you are not ready to be a pastor.
— Pastor Adelaja Sunday
Any local music scene at any point in time can be referred to as derivative of more well-known acts. The line separating influence from imitation is a blurry one. Very few artists are completely original; even great artists build upon what has occurred before, and add their personality and talent to create their own original expression.
— Stephen Tow, The Strangest Tribe: How a Group of Seattle Rock Bands Invented Grunge
the ability to get on the air, which was crucial to any reporter’s career, grew precisely as the ability to analyze diminished.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
Few emotions are more ephemeral in the political world than gratitude: appreciation for past favors. Far less ephemeral, however, is hope: the hope of future favors. Far less ephemeral is fear, the fear that in the future, favors may be denied.
— Robert A. Caro
People fail to realize there's a difference in kinds of money. There is old money and there is new money. Old money has political power but new money has only purchasing power. (1963)
— LIFE Magazine
We Are Interested In Others When They Are Interested In Us
— Publilius Syrus
Don't give people the chance to possess you with their negativity; their gibberish can look so charming, but it can't make you a better person.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
The diversity of our connections outside our particular tribe is directly proportionate to our ability to listen, learn and love.
— Steve Knox
For the first time ever we sympathized with the President because we saw how wildly our sphere of influence was misrepresented by those in no position to know what was going on.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
We influence others most profoundly when we do not seek to change them at all, but simply go about straightforwardly doing the right and loving thing.
— C. Terry Warner
The cafeteria made him feel like an observer rather than a participant in the high school experience.
— Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School
Secularism drew a radical distinction between public and private life, in which religion, in any traditional sense, was relegated to the private sphere with no hold over public life. There are many charms in secularism, in particular the freedom to believe what you will in private. But secularism also poses a public problem. There are those whose beliefs are so different from others’ beliefs that finding common ground in the public space is impossible. And then there are those for whom the very distinction between private and public is either meaningless or unacceptable. The complex contrivances of secularism have their charm, but not everyone is charmed.
— George Friedman
Anyone who takes a decided line in certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest.
— Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford
Convincing someone to have sex is the same as manipulation and does not actually count as getting consent.
— Shahla Khan, Friends With Benefits: Rethinking Friendship, Dating & Violence
Our own way is what our heart wants, and do not let others influence us.
— Jan Jansen
Psychology of small things rules.
— Stefan Fatsis, A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL
Jesus was sent to love, so He loved and through this example we ourselves should exemplify love also.
— Pauline Seaport
Jason (Elam, a Christian) is the kid in high school who gets along equally well with the jocks, the brains, the geeks, and the slackers, and influences their behavior.
— Stefan Fatsis, A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL
The newly-minted captain admits the irony between the gold on his shoulders and the lack of gold in his pockets.
— Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander
Don't let others influence your life... make your own decisions if you want your life to be governed by self.... That's lesson for self... learn it to avoid tensions and problems in your life...
— Debolina Bhawal
One ordinary woman connected to an extraordinary God can make a difference
— Pam Farrel, Woman of Influence: Ten Traits of Those Who Want to Make a Difference
The great actors always play themselves.
— Scott Farris, Kennedy and Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure
A newcomer could ascertain the identity of a town's true leaders – which storekeeper was respected, which farmer was listened to other farmers – only through endless hours of subtle probing of reticent men.
— Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power
She thinks that charm is a form of intelligence, and she respects the intelligence.
— Brooke Hauser, The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens
One biographer said Kennedy lived along the line where charm became power.
— Scott Farris, Kennedy and Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure
In order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child's parent or grandparent.
— Don Marquis
I believe in having fun first, and along the way, if you teach people, if you influence people, well and good.
— Ray Bradbury
Much of the geographical work of the past hundred years... has either explicitly or implicitly taken its inspiration from biology, and in particular Darwin. Many of the original Darwinians, such as Hooker, Wallace, Huxley, Bates, and Darwin himself, were actively concerned with geographical exploration, and it was largely facts of geographical distribution in a spatial setting which provided Darwin with the germ of his theory.
— David R. Stoddart
Civility is not a specific code of behavior as much as it is a call to unrelenting preemptive thought, and steady effort to care about influence on others.
— John R. Dallas Jr., We Need to Have a Word: Words of Wisdom, Courage and Patience for Work, Home and Everywhere
The political nature of man made it highly unlikely that a society designed to meet regularly would remain peaceable. "The way to make friends quarrel is to pit them in disputation under the public eye," Jefferson said.
— Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
The have influence, but no power.""In my experience, influence is power.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Power lasts ten years
—  influence not more than a hundred.
Steve's sales pitch on the NeXT operating system was dazzling," according to Amelio. " He praised the virtues and strengths as though he were describing a performance of Oliver as Macbeth.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
We may fondly imagine that we are impartial seekers after truth, but with a few exceptions, to which I know that I do not belong, we are influenced—and sometimes strongly—by our personal bias; and we give our best thoughts to those ideas which we have to defend.
— August Krogh
Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.
— Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin
What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.
— Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
If he (George Keenan)felt on occasion more than a little uncomfortable when being listened to, then he was truly unhappy when not being listened to.
— David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
The gap (between intellectuals and politicians) divides writing hands, talking heads and thinking minds of this country into two sections. One section flaunts academic achievements to make up for shortfalls in intelligence. The other asserts intelligence to camouflage deficiencies in academic excellence. In short, our intellectuals are torn by the dilemma whether they ought to carry their brains in their mouths, or mouths in their brains.
— Mohammad Badrul Ahsan
Beauty is an influence based off of judgment.
— Alyssa Keller
What gets recognized gets repeated
—  what gets celebrated becomes a habit. Individual recognition and group celebration fuel high performance. Make an effort to compliment people doing something right. There's nothing more fun than celebrating success.
Most of the things you absorb you will ultimately secrete.
— Tom Waits
In my experience, influence is power.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
We spend our lives striving to be persons of influence and consequence, when all that is required is to consistently do good to others.
— Psyche Roxas-Mendoza
Never make fun of people who are different...unless they have more money, power and influence. Then you must.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
As Friedland had done and as Jobs would learn to do, he was able to turn charm into a cunning force, to cajole and intimidate and distort reality with the power of his personality
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
If we do not question well then those who follow behind will almost certainly question badly. And if we are not confidently proclaiming the shape of our faith, then our faith will be of little use to those who desperately need it.
— Matthew Lee Anderson
Serving people is the best way to earn influence.
— Jeff Goins
In most cases, those who want power probably shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it probably do so for the wrong reasons, and those who want most to hold on to it don't understand that it's only temporary.
— John C. Maxwell, Becoming a Person of Influence: How to Positively Impact the Lives of Others
Stop looking for the biggest crowd, and start looking for the right crowd.
— Phil Cooke, One Big Thing: Discovering What You Were Born to Do
There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.
— Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
— Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety
Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil on the society you live in than you ever can have again.
— Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays
...you influenced me, in a way in which no one else did.
— Michael Kelahan, The World's Greatest Love Letters
At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain.I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my professional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous.
— Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
Even if 80 percent of the population of a country are Christian believers, they will have almost no cultural influence if the Christians do not live in cultural centers and work in culture-forging fields such as academia, publishing, media, entertainment, and the arts. The assumption that society will improve simply be more Christian believers being present is no longer valid.
— Timothy J. Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City
Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress his idea upon Cressida herself. She began to see herself as he saw her, to try to be like the notion of her that he carried everywhere in that pointed head of his. She was exalted quite beyond herself. Things that had been chilled under the grind came to life in her that winter, with the breath of Bouchalka’s adoration. Then, if ever in her life, she heard the bird sing on the branch outside her window; and she wished she were younger, lovelier, freer. She wished there were no Poppas, no Horace, no Garnets. She longed to be only the bewitching creature Bouchalka imagined her.
— Willa Cather, Youth and the Bright Medusa
These were lobbyists—many of them compensated quite handsomely not to react as human beings.
— Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
There are certain natures of which the mutual influence is such, that the more they say, the more they have to say. For these out of association grows adhesion, and out of adhesion, amalgamation.
— Charlotte Brontë, Villette
Without the participation of one fifth of the global population, without the endorsement of the world's second-largest economy, without the political will and security guarantee of this emerging power, international institutions and norms will be irrelevant and the legitimacy and credibility of their resolutions and arrangements will fall short of promise.
— Wang Yizhou
...but to be a connectworker, one must have an overall positive influence on people, and Victor has really made the switch.
— Michele Jennae, The Connectworker
I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my father's waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the equator of his body; he was that much larger than life. Then one day, I could do it. I held him, instead of him holding me, and all I wanted at that moment was to have it back the other way.
— Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts
I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please.
— Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating.
— Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road
You have my whole heart. You always did. You're the best guy. You always were.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
No love is greater than that of a father for His son.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.
— Walter M. Schirra, Sr.
You're the one who doesn't understand, I've been standing on the edge with you for years.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory
Every Autumn now my thoughts return to snow. Snow is something I identify myself with. Like my father, I am a snow person.
— Charlie English
Darling,You asked me to write you a letter, so I am writing you a letter. I do not know why I am writing you this letter, or what this letter is supposed to be about, but I am writing it nonetheless, because I love you very much and trust that you have some good purpose for having me write this letter. I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.Your father
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The referee told me this league has never had a brawl of that magnitude," said Mr. Penderwick after a long, painful silence. "Of course, at the time I was pretending to be a casual passerby and not a father at all.
— Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street
Well, sir, do you mean to remain there, commending my father’s taste in wine, or do you mean to accompany me to Ashtead?”“Set off for Ashtead at this hour, when I have been traveling for two days?” said Sir Horace. “Now, do, my boy, have a little common sense! Why should I?”“I imagine that your parental feeling, sir, must provide you with the answer! If it does not, so be it! I am leaving immediately!”“What do you mean to do when you reach Lacy Manor?” asked Sir Horace, regarding him in some amusement.“Wring Sophy’s neck!” said Mr. Rivenhall savagely.“Well, you don’t need my help for that, my dear boy!” said Sir Horace, settling himself more comfortably in his chair.
— Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
Acheron kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Rest. We'll be back when he needs you." He watched herclimb into bed before he took his nephew down to his room."Well, it appears to be just the two of us, little one. What say you we get naked, drunk and find us somewenches?"The baby actually smiled up at him as if he understood.Acheron nodded. "So that's it, eh? Barely a month old and you're already lecherous. You are your father's son.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Acheron
It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.
— Friedrich Schiller
I'm bored," she said."Learn how to tap-dance," he suggested, without turning around.
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaasla. (Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you'll be.) - Mandalorian saying
— Karen Traviss, Order 66:
I saw my father as a man, and not, as a man who was my father.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
It's rally bad when dads cry.
— Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer
A father’s tears and fears are unseen, his love is unexpressed, but his care and protection remains as a pillar of strength throughout our lives.
— Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Just take me with you. Please.I cant.Please, Papa.I cant. I cant hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I cant.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
A father is the template of a man Nature gives a girl
— Allison Pearson, I Don't Know How She Does It, The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
— Joseph Addison
When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.
— Yiddish Proverb
That porch is a happy-looking place, and my father - burdened, stoop-shouldered, cadaverously thin - doesn't seem to belong on it.
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Double Identity
I've only just arrived, Kate. It may surprise you to learn that you were my top priority.
— Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma
My dad was always snoozing on the couch, like Dagwood Bumstead. He was a lazy motherfucker. God bless him. He was always working on some kind of get-rich-quick scheme. This is what my dad was like: I'd say, Hey, Dad, we studied penguins today in school. He'd say, Yeah? I'm a penguin fucker from way back. Dad, I saw a giraffe at the zoo today. Yeah? I'm a giraffe fucker from way back. That's my dad. My dad was a giraffe fucker.
— James Ellroy
A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me."He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet.Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse."Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place.Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?
— Mette Ivie Harrison, The Princess and the Hound
The dream thatwe are our fathers. I walked to the Brod,41without knowing why, and looked intomy reflection in the water. I couldn’t lookaway. What was the image that pulled mein after it? What was it that I loved? Andthen I recognized it. So simple. In thewater I saw my father’s face, and that facesaw the face of its father, and so on, and soon, reflecting backward to the beginningof time, to the face of God, in whoseimage we were created. We burned withlove for ourselves, all of us, starters ofthe fire we suffered—our love was the afflictionfor which only our love was thecure . . .
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.
— Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts
The way Magnus’ breath had sounded, rattling in his chest, before he’d said his father’s name.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
...My dad, may he rest in peace, taught me many wonderful things. And one of the things he taught me was never ask a guy what you do for a living. He said "If you think about it, when you ask a guy, what do you do you do for a living," you’re saying "how may I gauge the rest of your utterances." are you smarter than I am? Are you richer than I am, poorer than I am?" So you ask a guy what do you do for a living, it’s the same thing as asking a guy, let me know what your politics are before I listen to you so I know whether or not you’re part of my herd, in which case I can nod knowingly, or part of the other herd, in which case I can wish you dead.
— David Mamet
[My father] loved me tenderly and shyly from a distance, and later on took a naive pride in seeing my name in print.
— Arthur Koestler
Now you look here. All your father ever dreamed of for you was to do something you loved in life. He didn't care about fancy qualifications or fancy clothes or cars, just that you were both happy and fulfilled. He was so excited about your dreams for a career.
— Hazel Gaynor, The Girl Who Came Home
I'm supposed to be a man but I can't help thinking no one ever showed me what that is supposed to look like. Maybe that is why I ride the middle all the time—never offending anyone, never getting a hard time, but never much standing out either.
— Heather Duffy Stone, This Is What I Want to Tell You
But I got through the review, for all their Latin and French; I did, and if you doubt me, you just look at the end of the great ledger, turn it upside down, and you'll find I've copied out all the fine words they said of you: "careful observer," "strong nervous English," "rising philosopher."Oh! I can nearly say it all off by heart, for many a time when I am frabbed by bad debts, or Osborne's bills, or moidered with accounts, I turn the ledger wrong way up, and smoke a pipe over it, while I read those pieces out of the review which speak about you, lad!
— Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters
The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.
— Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park
Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in those sheets, in those squares.
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
A boy is a magical creature - you can lock him out of your workshop, but you can't lock him out of your heart.
— Allan Beck
There were a few other moves of his father's he could do without as well - the sucker punches, the ruffling of the hair, the way of pronouncing the word son, in a slightly deeper voice. This hearty way of talking was getting worse, as if his father were auditioning for the role of Dad, but without much hope.
— Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Yaicha and Darren told me that I wasthe mailman's child,and I got so angry,stalking away,hot steam in my ribs.Yaicha and Darrentold me that I was the mailman's childand now I am thinkinghow wonderful it would beto havethe mailman asmy father.
— Thalia Chaltas, Because I Am Furniture
There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father's face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldn't even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losing - or giving up - its tiny quantum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe.
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Family myths are cherished by the people who--however unwittingly--have brought them into being. In my own situation, what my father was really saying to me during that last unfortunate phone call was that I had shattered our family's myth: the myth of a close and tight-knit family in which everyone was in complete agreement about everything, that is, in complete agreement with my father. I had violated one of the tenets of this myth in a way that was unforgivable to him. For that my punishment was to be expelled from the family.
— Mark Sichel, Healing from Family Rifts: Ten Steps to Finding Peace After Being Cut Off from a Family Member
My dad’s life was magnificent, but only if I let myself see and remember more than his years of decline.
— Lisa J. Shultz, A Chance to Say Goodbye: Reflections on Losing a Parent
Not every Father is a Dad..
— Brighton Mabuya
Whatever it was her father wanted, Emma did not know how to provide it. She felt confused by what he did, and imagined the problem was a lack in her, rather than him. And there was something
— Carol Lee, To Die For
The first time he saw me, comatose with a head the size of 3 basketballs, he didn't even think it was me.
— Amy Rankin, Nobody Thought I Could Do It, But I Showed Them, and So Can You!
WHERE IS MY SON?" Uncle Antonio bellows, levelling the two AK-47s he's holding at the lot of us. "Get away from him, you bastards!
— Jessica Khoury, Origin
(talking about his father) 230 pounds of nickels in Sears slacks.
— Bruce Springsteen
He was strict and hard and had perfectly clear and definite ideas about duty, where the others were concerned. For oneself one can always find circumstances that alter cases
— Hjalmar Söderberg
Her eyes traced the sleek shape of the table's legs, the sinuous curves of its corners, the gleam of its reflective, dark brown surface. She noticed that every time she breathed out, the surface fogged, and she disappeared from her father's table.
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
Well, in that case, no. I’m not your father. But if you go with another definition, meaning ‘a man who wants to be in your life and help raise you,’ then yes. I am.
— Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato
Your lifestyle shows who your father is
— Sunday Adelaja
Because this is Beth's fight, and that's what fathers do for their little girls,' he said.
— Tom Pollock, The City's Son
To Be Raised Without An Earthly Father Is Never An Excuse Not To Discover Purpose
— Sunday Adelaja
Do other dads not end their phone calls with existential despair? Because that's what my dad does. Papa ends most of his calls with me the way you might close a conversation with someone you want to menace. "Anyway," he'll say, "I'll be here. Staring into the abyss." Or, when I have given him good news, "The talented will rule and the rest will perish in the sea of mediocrity." Or, when I have given him bad news, "I am for for everything that happens to you, as everything is my fault." He never ends with anything that couldn't one day be construed as a tragic yet comic last word.
— Scaachi Koul
Dear Father, I already forgave you once. I read all your letters, which fed me crumbs of love and admiration. LIke Hansel and Gretel, I followed their trail to your door. But you have left me again. I have the whole summer ahead of me to re-read your letters, and to try to understand.
— Susie Morgenstern, Secret Letters From 0 To 10