Al Smith Quotes

They say experience is the best teacher, but I'll be damned if I know what it teaches you.

You can't see other's point of view when you have only one language.

I caught one last glimpse of her face, howling something at me.There were too many vowels in what she said, and they were in an unkind order. ("Substitutions")

To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way.

Speaking calls for risk, speaking calls for a sense of what one has to lose. Not just what one has to gain.

Some people use language as a mask. And some want to create designed language that appears to reveal them but does not.

Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?

There are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.

Now I was falling faster than a comet plummeting to the earth, just waiting to create a giant explosion. Just like a comet, I had no idea exactly how much damage I would leave in my wake.

It's because there are too many people who want to stop us having fun. That's the reason.

Jonah’s anger was not marked by outbursts of rage but by a quiet withdrawal from the company of others and a growing preoccupation with the events in his own life.

It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger.

And after that, I watched our house collapse in on itself and I spent some time lying in the rubble. Then I vanished completely. I wasn't here at all. Then you phoned.

And being here like this, so suddenly close to him is enough to make her lightheaded. It's a feeling like falling.

My mind does not easily accept stately historical processions.

You are not doing this for her. You're doing it for yourself. Your life is not just about the people you love. It's also about the people you hate.

She filed those moments away like precious documents, wore them smooth with memory, collected them like bits of prayers.

Memories, good and bad, can be used to help us heal if we don’t let ourselves be mired down in them.

There is a tidal wave of ignorance, Mma Ramotswe. It is a great tidal wave and it will drown all of us if we are not careful.

Parents must try to be, or at least put forth their best efforts to be, what they wish [their] children to be. It is impossible for you to be an example of what you are not.

Sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting.

Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one's own resources.

I can tell by the look on Hagin's face that he had eaten some of my food. It is amazing those boys aren't fat.

He recognizes voices within silence. (of Max Sebald)

We don't get to see ourselves the way the Lord sees us, but we can choose to believe what He says about us.

If you feel that without a certain person, or position, or achievement, your life would be not worth living, you may be deeper into idolatry than you think.

The person who learns to number his or her days gains a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90:12).

He is the Creator and the sustainer of all things. He is the unchanging, self-existent God, and that means that He depends on nobody. He is neither helped by our faith nor hindered by our unbelief.

We're conduits for the universe's desire to think about itself.

It was so pleasant, chaotic, emotionless, nameless-everything vibrating so beautifully in the universe without words.

My outstretched arms found hers, and I was home.

A hand held tightly, never to really let go.Fills up life around you, for the comforts within our soul.

I guess a little bit hero is enough. A little bit hero is all anyone really needs to be.

You don't have to be perfect to be good. You can do bad things and still be a good person.

When I let go of my own work, my own priorities, I lost the qualities he had been attracted to in the first place. That's how he put it. He loved the woman I was before I was in love with him.

Character, simply stated, is doing what you say you’re going to do.

Love not only transform your mental and emotional character/attitude, it also shifts your physical being, which goes thru subtle changes also. Love is POWERFUL! God is love.

No one has a problem with the first mile of a journey. Even an infant could do fine for a while. But it isn't the start that matters. It's the finish line.

Though a lifetime of listening to the music of the world has passed, even now the tone of the rain on the roof of my home is the sweetest sound I have ever heard.

You will make better decisions once you begin thinking long-term rather than short-term.

Some choices, once you make them, they stay made.

Because choices need time, the fulness of time, time being the horizontal axis of morality - you make a decision and then you wait and see, wait and see.

...Except when I was alone. I'd hate myself. It's how we feel about ourselves when we're alone that must guide our decisions.

In the cause of expedience and the quest for information, man has always been willing to trump his laws and betray his beliefs to legitimize the torture of those who do not share them.

Eisenhower on Patton: "Fundamentally, he is so avid for recognition as a great commander that he won't with ruthlessly suppress any habit that will jeopardize it.

I guess, like some guy once said, if triangles invented a god, the chances are high it would have three sides.

Storyboarded by the West Coast’s finest, the ceiling celebrated the exploits of that most durable of action heroes—God.

[A]ny being with the supposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible.

[A]ny being with thesupposed capacity to create the logically impossible must himself be logically impossible.

Holding onto what was isn't healthy for what is.