Foils Quotes

When writing, there are some scenes that are emotionally overwhelming. They completely overcome the author, and only when they do this can they cause a similar reaction in the reader.

Through this, the author gets to experience multiple lives. If a character's life flashes before their eyes, it flashes before the author's eyes too, and he or she remembers it as his or her own.

With reading, we get to live other lives vicariously, and this is doubly so with writing. It is like a lucid dream, where we guide the outcome. In this, we don't merely write *about* a character -- we momentarily *become* them, and walk as they walk, think as they think, and do as they do. When we return to our own life, we might return a little shaken, likely a little stronger, hopefully a little wiser.

What is certain is that we return better, because experiencing the lives of others makes us understand their aims and dreams, their fears and foils, the challenges and difficulties, and joys and triumphs, that they face. It helps us grow and empathise, and see all the little pictures that make up the bigger one we see from the omniscience of the narrator. ~ Dean F. Wilson

To plan secretly, to move surreptitiously, to foil the enemy's intentions and balk his schemes, so that at last the day may be won without shedding a drop of blood. ~ Sun Tzu

I made a tin man costume with tin foil and furnace parts because I thought it would help me be more heartless. ~ Marcel Dzama

I need thy presence every passing hour; What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power? ~ Henry Francis Lyte

I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.
[On first words spoken on a phonograph.] ~ Thomas A. Edison

If you look at the great superheroes in any universe, you will always find that they have the very best super villains opposing them. It's because they are foils; they are people that the heroes play off of. ~ Jim Lee

I think Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have done so much for women in comedy in the sense that they've normalized it. You don't think, 'I'm going to watch that comedy starring a woman,' you think, 'I'm going to watch that funny show.' They refuse to play the foils for men, or be reduced to the butt of every joke, and I love that about both of them. ~ Tatiana Maslany

My pencil is like a fencer's foil. ~ Andrew Wyeth

I get my highlights touched up with Susan Henry at Shades in Beverly Hills. She developed hypo-allergenic hair color products with no ammonia because she's allergic to others; she's an incredible colorist. She does balayage instead of the foils, and I'll go and she will do my entire head of highlights in an hour. ~ Jennifer Morrison

My big subject as a historian is how Americans divide themselves. What are the divisions that structure our political lives. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were perfect foils for that story. ~ Rick Perlstein

In the human lung, there are millions of air foils, just like aeroplane wings, which facilitate normal breathing. ~ Forrest Bird

I have a lot of experience with making fake helmets out of foil. ~ Ray Toro

I'm sure that there must have been times when you have read books or watched films and found yourself secretly wishing for the villain to win. Why? Isn't that against the rules by which our society lives? Why should you feel this way? It's simple, really; the villain is the true hero of these tales, not the well-intentioned moron who somehow foils their diabolical scheme. The villain get's all the best lines, has the best costumes, has unlimited power and wealth- why on earth would anyone not want to be the villain? ~ Mark Walden

Humanity is a natural foil for inhumanity, and humanity is what will ultimately keep us going when all else has failed. ~ Margaret Cho

I'm a pretty convenient foil for a lot of people. ~ Kevin Costner

The painful warrior famous for fight, After a thousand victories, once foil'd, Is from the books of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd ~ William Shakespeare

Wrap fish fillets, sliced veggies, and other quick-cooking items inside foil packets with bundles of fresh herbs and throw them directly on the grill; the steam will release the herb's perfume and flavor anything contained inside the pouch. ~ Emeril Lagasse

Stay with & live your dreams, for these trail blazers did and history is telling their stories in golden, glossy and embossed shining foils ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

In times of uncertainty, we tend to move away from deterministic world views. And when we try to find moral footing for our actions, we compare ourselves to the foil of all foils, the Nazi period. It's a quest for moral certainty by saying, "Even if we're not doing great these days, at least we're not the Third Reich." Which can be consoling or alarmist. There's always a present-day agenda behind it. ~ Gavriel David Rosenfeld

Words, for all they were flimsy and invisible, had great strength. They could be fortified as a castle wall and sharp as a foil. They could bite, slap, shock, wound. But unlike deeds, words couldn't really help you. No promise ever rescued a person; it was the carrying-through of it that brought about salvation. ~ Jodi Picoult

For me too, the periodic table was a passion ... As a boy, I stood in front of the display for hours, thinking how wonderful it was that each of those metal foils and jars of gas had its own distinct personality. ~ Freeman Dyson

Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges. ~ William Hazlitt

I like to do designs on the side of my face, or cut out foil stickers from the crafts store and put them on my forehead. ~ Khloe Kardashian

You teach kids how to succeed when they successfully foil the educational system. ~ Arlo Guthrie

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light. ~ John Ruskin

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.
Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).
Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.
Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so. ~ Robert Graves

A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in. A minute to smile and an hour to weep in. A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double. And that is life. A crust and a corner that makes love precious, With a smile to warm and tears to refresh us, And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter. And that is life. ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed upon. It will always be so while we live in this world. Sin will not spare for one day. There is no safety but in a constant warfare for those who desire deliverance from sin's perplexing rebellion. ~ John Owen

How often, when we have been nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our tongues were the witty foils with which we fenced each other off. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The masses are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools ~ Georg Brandes

Women are foils to men in South Korea. It is hard for women to take a lead role even in NGOs for political resistance. Men think women should do trivial things on the margins. They think women should be merely a seasoning for a dish. I feel anger and sorrow seeing this. ~ Kim Hyesoon