Quotes from William H. Armstrong

One day might be different from another, but there ain't much difference when they're put together.

Do you believe that you really have a desire to learn, or would you, had you been left alone from birth, be totally primitive and beastlike in your thoughts and feelings?

If we do only what is required of us we are slaves, the moment we do more we are free. – CICERO

He had read in it: "Only the unwise think that what has changed is dead." He had asked the teacher what it meant, and the teacher had said that if a flower blooms once, it goes on blooming somewhere forever. It blooms on for whoever has seen it blooming.

One day might be different from another, but there ain't much difference when they're put together. September 14, 1911: Writer and teacher William Armstrong wrote celebrated children's books including the Newbery Medal-winning Sounder, about an African American sharecropper family with a loud and loyal hound, inspired by Odysseus' dog Argus. Armstrong was born in Virginia 102 years ago today.

I have often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of cruelty, and I have found by experience that malicious and inhuman animosity and fierceness are usually accompanied by weakness. Wolves and filthy bears, and all the baser beasts, fall upon the dying.

In Bible-story journeys, ain't no journey hopeless. Everybody finds what they suppose to find.

He ran his fingers back and forth over the broad crown of the head of a coon dog named Sounder.