The collection / 14 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

14 results · Page 1 of 1Play this collection ▷

01Undated

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

Shelby Foote / quote

02Undated

A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice. The stunned champ cried while inspecting the machine, "There's a man in there!"Lincoln's good news, he confided from the heights of leadership, was that there was in fact a man in there.

Shelby Foote / quote

03Undated

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 / quote

04Undated

On Lee as commander: "He had a cheerful dignity and could praise them (his men) without seeming to court their favor.

Shelby Foote / quote

05Undated

Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery, another was emancipation. It's a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy - and it was. But the way it was done led to tragedy, turning four million people loose with no jobs or trades or learning. And then in 1877 for a few electoral votes, just abandoning them entirely. A huge amount of pain and trouble resulted. Everybody in America is still paying for it.

Shelby Foote / quote

06Undated

I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.

Shelby Foote / quote

07Undated

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 / quote

08Undated

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.

Shelby Foote / quote

09Undated

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 / quote

10Undated

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

Shelby Foote / quote

11Undated

Longevity conquers scandal every time.

Shelby Foote / quote

12Undated

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 / quote

13Undated

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 / quote

14Undated

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 / quote