I would not have the old ways die, for all people in their own way find a path to wisdom. Each way can be a good way. Each has something to offer the world.
If at any time your Prince should pretend your position with him is sure, begin from that moment to feel unsure.
If you’re going to have peace rather than violence, both sides have got to want it. One side alone can’t make peace.
It is neither size nor age that makes a man, Mr. Ryerson, but something he has inside. My son has it.
She’d never been one to think in terms of years, anyway. A person was what they were, and many a man at forty was sixty in his ways and many another was twenty and would never grow past it.
The trees are aware, and the bushes. The birds and small animals are aware, and they listen, hesitant, suspecting. Awareness of danger is an element of their being. It is like their breathing, like the blood in their veins, and one who lives much with the wilderness become so aware, too... Half of woodcraft is attention, and all of survival.
It is a living. It is enough. I am free. The nights are long and quiet, the mornings cool and bright, I live with the sun, the moon, and the stars. The air is fresh where I am, and there is no one to hurry me or to demand this or that of me.
I have education and once I had position. Now I am nobody, but I am happy.
It didn’t seem fair, but then, a lot of things aren’t. We take them as they come.
The things a man will wish for are harder to leave behind than all his wants...
Remember that, son. The dogs bark, but the wagons go on their way, and if you’re going someplace you haven’t time to bother with barking dogs.
In Bowdrie’s limited vocabulary, to be responsible was the most important word.
It has often been said that we have but one life to live; that is nonsense. If one reads fiction he or she can live a thousand lives, in many parts of the world or in outer space.
If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long?
But a long time ago I made me a rule: I let people do what they want to do.
The whole town was like that. Probably there weren’t three men in town who had not used guns, and used them a lot.
Never let them know how you feel or what you are thinking. If they know how you feel they know how to hurt you, and if they hurt you once, they will try again.
It means little to anybody but us. We set store by kinfolk. We’ve our troubles from time to time, but when one of us is in danger, there’ll be help from any who are around.
He had no love for sleeping inside and wanted his horse near him. There was something about lying under the stars that was conducive to thought, and he had some thinking to do.
What we did not possess we had to make for ourselves or learn to do without, but the little I learned helped me to build a defense against the change that time would surely bring, to teach me that to live was to change, and that change was the one irrevocable law. Nothing remained the same.