Arc Foster > Arc's Quotes

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.”
― E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“Study hard... so that you can be someone in this life.”
― Antonio Olinto, The Water House

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see.”
― Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day

“When you think things are bad,
when you feel sour and blue,
when you start to get mad...
you should do what I do!
Just tell yourself, Duckie,
you're really quite lucky!
Some people are much more...
oh, ever so much more...
oh, muchly much-much more
unlucky than you!”
― Dr. Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

“This was when she asked him whether it was true that love conquered all, as the songs said. 'It is true', he replied, 'but you would do well not to believe it.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons

“The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.”
― Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

“A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Solitude sometimes is best society.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
― Samuel Beckett

“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“A Wasn’t just isn't. He just isn't present. But you… You ARE YOU! And, now isn't that pleasant!”
― Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!

“I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

“You trying to tell me a woman can’t be nothing without a man. But you alright, huh? You can just walk out of here without me - without a woman – and still be a man. That’s alright. Ain’t nobody gonna ask you, “Avery, who you got to love you?” That’s alright for you. But everybody gonna be worried about Berniece. “How Berniece gonna take care of herself? How she gonna raise that child without a man? Wonder what she do with herself. How she gonna live like that?” Everybody got all kinds of questions for Berniece. Everybody telling me I can’t be a woman unless I got a man. Well, you tell me, Avery – you know – how much a woman am I?”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, there arises the recognition of ugliness. When they all know the good as good, there arises the recognition of evil.”
― Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching, Eighty-one Maxims from the Father of Taoism / Includes "The Gatekeeper's Tale"

“I will not eat them in a house, i will not eat them with a mouse,i will not eat them in a box i will not eat them with a fox, i will not eat them here of there i will not eat them anywhere, I do not like green eggs and ham i do not like them sam i am”
― Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham

“In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.”
― Alice Walker, The Temple of My Familiar

“Read, read, read. That's all I can say.”
― Carolyn Keene, The Secret of the Old Clock

“Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.”
― George Eliot, Silas Marner

“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”
― William Blake, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion

“I did not tell you that it would be okay, because I have never believed it would be okay. What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“In our adversity, God shouts to us.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe: Student Packet Grades 3 4

“Because your question searches for deep meaning,
I shall explain in simple words”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“The answers to my questions lie within. There is nothing I can ask that I do not, somewhere within the deep recesses of my soul, know the answer to.”
― Rosemary Altea, The Eagle and the Rose: A Remarkable True Story

“(T)here is no such thing as coincidence, that our often "chance" meetings are planned. Planned by a greater, universal force, which we here on earth have so little knowledge of. [...] Each moment of time is precious. Nothing, not one thought nor one deed is wasted. A casual conversation, never casual. A chance meeting, unavoidable. Coincidence, always planned.... A universal plan. All life forms, and even that which seems to have no life, is inescapably part of the plan.”
― Rosemary Altea, The Eagle and the Rose: A Remarkable True Story

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis