Peculiarly American Quotes & Sayings

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners. — Edward Abbey

I would advocate that you show me your smiling face, and how happy you can make your life. — Andy Biersack

Our love has evolved into something else because of the way we respect and listen to each other's needs. — Tiffany King

It is a thorough process, this war with the wilderness - breaking nature, taming the soil. feeding it on oats. The civilized man regards the pine tree as his enemy. He will fell it and let in the light, grub it up and raise wheat or rye there. It is no better than a fungus to him. — Henry David Thoreau

Sanya told you about his beliefs.' I felt the corners of my mouth start to twinge as another smile threatened. 'Yeah.'
Shiro let out a pleased snort. 'Sanya is a good man.'
'I just don't get why he'd be recruited as a Knight of the Cross.'
Shiro looked at me over the glasses, chewing. After a while, he sad, 'Man sees faces. Sees skin. Flags. Membership lists. Files.' He took another large bite, ate it, and said, 'God sees hearts. — Jim Butcher

I always thought that socialism here would be peculiarly American, with some reasonable, post-industrial evolution between working-class needs and market forces. It won't be bloody like the Russian Revolution. — Howard Fast

But the young educated adults of the 90s
who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so
beautifully
got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself. — David Foster Wallace

Do not be scared to load any place with your mere presence. — Rick Johnson

English was good enough for Jesus Christ and it's good enough for the children of Texas. — Miriam A. Ferguson

If you begin to live life looking for the God that is all around you, every moment becomes a prayer. — Joseph Frank Bianco

skyscraper would remain one of the most peculiarly American of white-collar institutions, much more a symbol of the prowess, even ruthlessness, of American-style capitalism than what it equally was: an especially tall collection of boring offices. — Nikil Saval

Expecting a novel to bear the weight of our whole disturbed society - to help solve our contemporary problems - seems to me a peculiarly American delusion. To write sentences of such authenticity that refuge can be taken in them: isn't this enough? Isn't it a lot? — Jonathan Franzen

It feels like it feels like it's been five minutes, but it hasn't been five minutes yet. — Heather Hall

That peculiarly American religion, President-worship. — Gore Vidal

He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American - that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, with the formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. — F Scott Fitzgerald

What I wasn't expecting was the euphoria once my body began releasing endorphins. The mixture of pain and pleasure was ecstasy. Getting my tattoo introduced me to secret, dark pleasures. I would always be a marked prisoner, but I was a liberated soul. — Scarlet Risque

And so the greatest of American triumphs ... became a peculiarly joyless victory. We had won the Cold War, but there would be no parades. — Robert M. Gates

That's how envy works: the better things are, the worse they are, because they don't belong to you. — William Deresiewicz

Whoever allows the cognition of the increase of horror to escape them, does not merely fall prey to cold-hearted contemplation, but fails to recognize, along with the specific difference of what is newest from what has gone before, simultaneously the true identity of the whole, of horror without end. — Theodor W. Adorno

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers. — Emile M. Cioran