Foote Quotes & Sayings

I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe. — Shelby Foote

Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home. — Shelby Foote

Death and the dice level all distinctions. — Samuel Foote

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. — Shelby Foote

I never cared what kind of grade I got. — Shelby Foote

Most of my inspiration, if that's the word, came from books themselves. — Shelby Foote

North was only a direction indicated by a compass
if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation. — Shelby Foote

I have enormous respect for the human being because they're asked to take on a lot. And I don't think there's any easy solution. But I think the journey is what you have to finally be satisfied with, but not be afraid of the lessons one has to learn ... it ends up as grace. And you grow; you find a way to continue. — Horton Foote

As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a sense of defeat which none of the rest of the country has. — Shelby Foote

Everyone needs an editor. — Timothy Foote

He is not only dull in himself, but the cause of dullness in others. — Samuel Foote

Competition is. In every business, no matter how small or how large, someone is just around the corner forever trying to steal your ideas and build his success out of your imagination, struggling after that which you have toiled endless years to secure, striving to outdo you in each and every way. If such a competitor would work as hard to originate as he does to copy, he would much more quickly gain success. — Alice Foote MacDougall

My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named for his father and great-grandfather, and I was named Albert Horton Foote, Jr. — Horton Foote

An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character ... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory. — Timothy Foote

Much of the success of life depends upon keeping one's mind open to opportunity and seizing it when it comes. — Alice Foote MacDougall

I took five years on the first volume, five years on the second volume, and ten years on the third volume. — Shelby Foote

They will tell you Shiloh was no cavalry battle; the field was too cut-up with ravines and choked with timber for the usual mounted work. However, none of Forrest's men realized this at the time and we had our moments — Shelby Foote

I can't begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else. — Shelby Foote

Writing is the thing that props me up. — Horton Foote

But the same thing was true in the army. You slept in a barracks with all kinds of people of every nationality, every trade, every character and quality you can imagine, and that was a good experience. — Shelby Foote

We were green; most of us had never left home before (officers as well as men, except the officers carried their greenness better) yet here we were, traveling south up an enemy river past slow creeks and bayous and brooding trees. I thought to myself if this was the country the Rebels wanted to take out of the Union, we ought to say thank you, good riddance — Shelby Foote

A rich man's war and a poor man's fight ... — Shelby Foote

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers, their trying their hand at poetry. — Shelby Foote

But they were all thinking the selfsame thing: I might be a disgrace to my country. I might be a coward, even. But I'm not up there in those woods getting shot at — Shelby Foote

Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time. — Shelby Foote

Refer me to one atheist who denies the existence of God ... Etymologically, as well as philosophically, an atheist is one without God. That is all the 'A' before 'Theist' really means. — George William Foote

He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others. — Samuel Foote

One must eliminate the traditional and cling to the essential. — Alice Foote MacDougall

For too many of us ease is far more soul-destroying than trouble. — Alice Foote MacDougall

A writer has an inescapable voice. I think it's inherent in the nature, and I think that we don't control it anymore than we control what we want to write about. — Horton Foote

Will highly comprehensible code, by virtue of being easy to modify, inevitably be supplanted by increasingly less elegant code until some equilibrium is achieved between comprehensibility and fragility? Perhaps simple on the outside/fragile on the inside can be an effective survival strategy for evolving artifacts. — Brian Foote

Overconfidence in one's own ability is the root of much evil. Vanity, egoism, is the deadliest of all characteristics. This vanity, combined with extreme ignorance of conditions the knowledge of which is the very A B C of business and of life, produces more shipwrecks and heartaches than any other part of our mental make-up. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Getting close to books, and spending time by myself, I was obliged to think about things I would never have thought about if I was busy romping around with a brother and sister. — Shelby Foote

Hunger and cold, ill-health and pain are nothing. They pass. The thing that remains is ignorant criticism, well-meaning but futile advice, the contempt of a subordinate, the feelings of the underdog. — Alice Foote MacDougall

But it seemed so wrong, so scandalous, somehow so unreligious for a dead man to have to keep on fighting - or running, anyhow - that it made me sick at my stomach. I didn't want to have any more to do with the war if this was the way it was going to be — Shelby Foote

One foote is better then two crutches. — George Herbert

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things ... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads. — Shelby Foote

It is a lonely programme. The very virtues you cultivate become walls that inevitably separate you from your kind ... A new danger comes to your soul, and intolerance and impatience with those who are as you have been all but destroy that which you have taken such pains to build up. Not alone are there spiritual barriers between you and the friends that you have, but your business training has made your mind incisive. In the swift rush of business you have no time for small debates and petty dilemmas. — Alice Foote MacDougall

That was what bothered him most: the fact that she seemed to encourage his advances, and even granted him certain liberties, up to the point at which she turned on him with violence or laughter. He did not know which was worse, the chuckling or the blows; there was something terribly unmanly about being on the receiving end of either. But he looked forward to a time when he could repay her, could laugh at her or strike her as he saw fit. Thus marriage was already in his mind. Next — Shelby Foote

He who is good at excuses is generally good for nothing else. — Samuel Foote

I'm crazy about Grant: his character, his nature, his science in fighting and everything else. But I don't like the idea that he never accepted the blame for anything, always found someone else to blame for any mistake that was ever made, including blaming Prentiss for Shiloh. — Shelby Foote

I've redone plays of mine and made changes. A play is a living thing, and I'd never say I wouldn't rewrite years later. Tennessee Williams did that all the time, and it's distressing, because I'd like the play to be out there in its finished form. — Horton Foote

I've never known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way. — Shelby Foote

Despising cowardice in others, I wished to prove myself no coward. Believing in the good, the gentle, the beautiful things of life, I addressed myself to the sweet duty of keeping these attributes for my children's sake and my own. And in striving to provide a living for them, I found a success beyond my wildest dreams. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Not married until 33, Abraham Lincoln said, A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that cannot hurt me. — Shelby Foote

When house and land are gone and spent, then learning is most excellent. — Samuel Foote

I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something. — Shelby Foote

The small perplexities of small minds eddy and boil about you. Confident from the experience that has led you out of these same dangers, you attack each problem as it appears, unafraid. — Alice Foote MacDougall

We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than the bayonets of our enemies. Politician turned Union General Nathaniel Banks, in plea he couldn't abandon an untenable position. — Shelby Foote

Commercialism is the blemish on the fair face of American life. Fighting against the terrible conditions of the explorer and pioneer, our forefathers had little time to think of beauty. Hearts and heads became as hardened to the more gracious things of life as did their bodies against physical hardship. Little by little, as nature yielded before the dynamite of their wills, life began to express itself in the same hard terms, and the great commerce of a New World bent everything to its indomitable will. — Alice Foote MacDougall

He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward. Jefferson Davis's future wife describing him at first meeting. — Shelby Foote

But I don't really write to honor the past. I write to investigate, to try to figure out what happened and why it happened, knowing I'll never really know. I think all the writers that I admire have this same desire, the desire to bring order out of chaos. — Horton Foote

I simply don't believe in failure. In itself, it doesn't exist. We create it. We make ourselves fail. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Success is an absurd, erratic thing. She arrives when one least expects her and after she has come may depart again almost because of a whim. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience. — Shelby Foote

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't believe how much it's a part of your thinking. — Shelby Foote

The masters eye fattens the horse, and his foote the ground. — George Herbert

The CRAFT approach, developed by Bob Meyers at U of New Mexico, is one set of important tools that DO work, and it feels great to see families using these strategies and getting results, feeling hopeful again, feeling empowered, getting support, learning to trust themselves again, getting their lives and the lives of their children back. — Jeff Foote

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What! no soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber. — Samuel Foote

One who preserves all the exterior decencies of ignorance. — Samuel Foote

Early on, I said to myself that I would like to write a kind of moral and spiritual history of a place. It sounds a little pretentious, I know. But that's really what I set for myself. — Horton Foote

The boundary between the real and the unreal had been let down in Foote's mind, and between the comings and goings of the cloud-shadows and the dark errands of the ghosts there was no longer any way of making a selection. He had entered the cobwebby borderland between the human and the animal, where nothing is ever more than half true, and only as much as half true for the moment.

("There Shall Be No Darkness") — James Blish

You the rich are no whit more attractive or capable than you who were poor and struggling a few years back. But when before you plodded lonely and unappreciated, now the glamour of the motor and the smart apartment surrounds you with a tangible glory. It is amazing how many friends look you up, call you by name, and extol you, who were once a little timid, or indifferent, or utterly neglectful in your time of dire poverty. One has true friends when one is poor and no riches can be greater than that. They are not so obvious when one is rich. — Alice Foote MacDougall

It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown ... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success. — Alice Foote MacDougall

A fact is not a truth until you love it. — Shelby Foote

The fame of Maria Foote's beauty and charm of manner had reached London, and in May 1814, she made her first appearance at Covent Garden Theatre and personated Amanthis in 'The Child of Nature' with such grace and effect that the manager complimented her with an immediate engagement. — Sabine Baring-Gould

If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture. — Brian Foote

I've known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them ... to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don't ask quarters. — Horton Foote

If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing. — Shelby Foote

You easy-living boys had better get set, they said. There's johnnies out there thicker than fleas on a billy goat in a barnlot — Shelby Foote

Now I lay me down to sleep In mud that's many fathoms deep. If I'm not here when you awake Just hunt me up with an oyster rake — Shelby Foote

I am always glad to think that my education was, for the most part, informal, and had not the slightest reference to a future business career. It left me free and untrammeled to approach my business problems without the limiting influence of specific training. — Alice Foote MacDougall

The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by a constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequalled. — Walter Millis

That is the wearisome part of business - there is no peace, no sense of certain, permanent achievement, no stability. The unexpected, and usually the awful, is forever happening. — Alice Foote MacDougall

A combination of all that was best in the gladdest days of the departing year ... — Shelby Foote

With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat - assured of success. General commanding — Shelby Foote

There is romance in coffee. It comes from the ends of the earth, and goes to the far corners of man's habitation. — Alice Foote MacDougall

It was a strange thing to be in a distant land, among things you'd never seen before, all because our people in Congress had squabbled among themselves and failed to get along and there were hotheads in the South who thought more of their Negroes and their pride than they did of their country — Shelby Foote

I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose. — Shelby Foote

Yes, there is work enough for all of us and today is no time to be idle — Martha Foote Crowe

Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit ... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being ... We attack not a person but a belief, not a binge but an idea, not a fact but a fancy. — George William Foote

A lot of writing is thinking. — Horton Foote

I so earnestly believe that prayer can be helpful and guide you and protect you and inspire you. I mean, I'm in awe. — Horton Foote

You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore. — Robert Duvall

And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War. — Shelby Foote

In all the wide gamut of human experience, nothing plays so important a part as faith ... Faith that is as broad as the heavens and as wide as the earth. Faith that comprehends in its vast sympathies everything human as well as divine, and carries one with the swift sure wings of the angels directly to his goal. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Burnside left even sooner, hard on the heels of a violent argument with Meade, an exchange of recriminations which a staff observer said went far toward confirming one's belief in the wealth and flexibility of the English language as a medium of personal dispute. — Shelby Foote

Woman, I tell you, is a microcosm; and rightly to rule her, requires as great talents as to govern a state. — Samuel Foote

It wasn't a question of luck, the way some folks will tell you; they will tell you it's back luck to be near the wounded. It was just that we didn't want to be close to them any longer than it took to run past, the way you wouldn't want to be near someone who had something catching, like smallpox — Shelby Foote

In New York, there are a lot of plays to see, and I try to see as many as I can. — Horton Foote

Perhaps nothing in all my business has helped me more than faith in my fellow man. From the very first I felt confident that I could trust the great, friendly public. So I told it quite simply what I thought, what I felt, what I was trying to do. And the response was quick, sure, and immediate. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Imagination is a valuable asset in business and she has a sister, Understanding, who also serves. Together they make a splendid team and business problems dissolve and the impossible is accomplished by their ministrations ... Imagination concerning the world's wants and the individual's needs should be the Alpha and Omega of self-education. — Alice Foote MacDougall

They were Amy and Jeff Carruthers and they rode south out of Bristol, gravel chattering under the upswept fenders. After a while the man said suddenly, "Whats it like?" Amy glanced out at the fields. "Cotton. Everywhere nothing but cotton. — Shelby Foote

Architecture is a hypothesis about the future that holds that subsequent change will be confined to that part of the design space encompassed by that architecture. — Brian Foote

You have to watch out with my plays. They're like yeast. You think they're one thing, then all of a sudden subtext gets to working. — Horton Foote

Not only is orderliness an economy; it produces rest. — Alice Foote MacDougall

I don't want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter, and I don't even want a fountain pen between me and the paper. — Shelby Foote

When you're a writer, you have to write these stories, even if you don't get paid — Horton Foote

Born in a cellar ... and living in a garret. — Samuel Foote

When one is altering the face of the universe one cannot remember small helpful acts. — Alice Foote MacDougall