S.L. Wallace Quotes

Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.

Do not talk about your greatness; you are really, in essential nature, no greater than those around you.

You must cease from looking at human mistakes and look at successes; cease from seeing faults and see virtues.

Do all that you can do in a perfect manner every day, but do it without haste, worry or fear. Go as fast as you can , but never hurry.

Do not try to convert others to your point of view, except by holding it and living accordingly.

No possible combination of circumstances can keep a man down, if he makes his personal attitude right and determines to rise.

The man who is wise enough to know the right thing to do, who is good enough to wish to do only the right thing, and who is able and strong enough to do the right thing is a truly great man.

Thinking is the hardest and most exhausting of all labor; and hence many people shrink from it.

The whole process of mental adjustment and atunement can be summed up in one word: Gratitude

The 'advancing man' in medicine, who holds to a clear mental image of himself as successful, and who obeys the laws of faith, purpose, and gratitude, will cure every curable case he undertakes.

This diagnosis can be done in about two lines. It doesn't engage anybody.

This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.

To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.

Do all the work you can do, every day, and do each piece of work in a perfectly successful manner; put the power of success, and the purpose to get rich, into everything that you do.

The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining

It is easy to understand that the nearer we live to the source of wealth, the more wealth we shall receive.

Faith When you feel deeply that a certain act is the right act, do it and have perfect faith that the consequences will be good.

This must be your point of view: that the world and all it contains is perfect, though not completed.

To do things in a way you want to do them, you will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think: this is the first step toward getting rich.

Nothing that is possible in spirit is impossible in flesh and blood. Nothing that man can think is impossible. Nothing that man can imagine is impossible of realization.

Wisdom is obtained by reading the mind of God.

Let your thoughts be ruled by principle, and then live up to your thoughts.

But the value of gratitude does not consist solely in getting you more blessings in the future. Without gratitude you cannot long keep from dissatisfied thought regarding things as they are.

The average person's idea of a great man, rather than one who serves, is of one who succeeds in getting himself served.

Do not pay too much attention to the advice or suggestions of those around you.

We're in an emergency situation. The United States has become an absolutely terrifying country, and I would hope that I could participate in some way in stopping the horror and the brutality.

I sincerely believe that if Bush and Cheney recognized the full humanity of other people's mothers around the world, they wouldn't commit the crimes they commit.

I probably have a higher opinion of my writing than the average person, at least when I'm in a good mood, but I don't really think of my plays as only being relevant to a particular month or year.

There is a sense in which we are all each other's consequences

You'll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do. If you're very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide.

Faith can reclaim deserts as well as move mountains.

I balked at nothing, I was above nothing. Everything had something to teach me.

Any life will provide the material for writing, if it is attended to.

Are you a reader? If you aren't a reader, you might as well forget trying to be a writer.

The meeting of writer and reader is an intimate act, and it properly takes place in private.

The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

One means of sanity is to retain a hold on the natural world, ... Americans still have that chance, more than many peoples.

The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not.

Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.

Poetry is a means of redemption.

The genuine artist is never 'true to life.' He sees what is real, but not as we are normally aware of it. We do not go storming through life like actors in a play. Art is never real life.

Life is the elimination of what is dead.

After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends.

One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.

Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair. And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice

How red the rose that is the soldier

The great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of earth remains to be written.

I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.

The heavy trees, The grunting, shuffling branches, the robust, The nocturnal, the antique, the blue-green pines Deepen the feelings to inhuman depths.