Sounder Quotes

“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.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“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.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“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.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“If a flower blooms once, it goes on blooming somewhere forever. It blooms on for whoever has seen it blooming.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“He ran his fingers back and forth over the broad crown of the head of a coon dog named Sounder.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“Only the unwise think that what has changed is dead.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“And the guard would laugh and say "I don't know no names; I only know numbers.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“The boy was crying now. Not that there was any new or sudden sorrow. There just seemed to be nothing else to fill up the vast lostness of the moment.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“ceiling. Sometimes on Sundays the boy walked with his parents to set awhile at one of the distant cabins. Sometimes they went to the meetin’ house. And there was school too. But it was far away at the edge of town. Its term began after harvest and ended before planting time. Two successive Octobers the boy had started, walking the eight miles morning and evening. But after a few weeks when cold winds and winter sickness came, his mother had said, “Give it up, child. It’s too long and too cold.” And the boy, remembering how he”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“hacksaw”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“in.”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder

“III”
― William H. Armstrong, Sounder