Reading without thinking is nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.
Out here you better have a gun, and a gun in the wagon ain’t good for nothin’. I believe what the old Quaker said, ‘Trust in the Lord, but keep your powder dry.
If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it’s a ‘historical novel.’ If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it’s a ‘Western’- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.
It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, ‘He was a man who didn’t believe in violence, He’s a good man... and dead.
People have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gamboling, thieving and robing are covered over folks will tolerate it longer than out right violence, even when the violence may be cleansing.
Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area to what was happening elsewhere, and what had happened in the past. To view a period in isolation is to miss whatever message it has to offer.
A man marries by accident, a woman by design.
Hardy had learned in a hard school, where the tests are given by savage Indians, by bitter cold, by hunger. These were tests where the result was not just a bad mark if one failed. The result was a starved or frozen body somewhere, forgotten in the wilderness.
People only talk about how wonderful youth is when they have forgotten how hard it was.
Es wird eine Zeit kommen, in der man glaubt, dass alles zu Ende ist. Das wird der Anfang sein.
No man can put a rope on the past and hope to snub it down. The best thing is to learn to it ride the new trails – Kilkenny.
He was realizing how cheap are the principles for which we do not have to fight, how easy it is to establish codes when all the while our freedom to talk had been fought and bled for by others.
Don’t go for that gun,” I said quietly. “I want you tried in a court of law, not dead on this floor.
The buzzard could not reason but he knew the patterns that led to food. His entire life was built upon such fragments of knowledge and he knew that where such groups of men rode, death rode with them.
My future is one I must make myself.
Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.
When I die, remember that what you knew of me is with you always. What is buried is only the shell of what was. Do not regret the shell, but remember the man. Remember the father.
Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.
I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label.
Long ago I learned nothing gets done by just wishing it. You have to do it.