When a man picks up a gun he picks up responsibility. He has a dangerous weapon, and he’d better have coolness and discretion... He’d better have judgment. That other man who wears a gun also has a family, a home, he has hopes, dreams, ambitions. If you’re human, you must think of that. Nobody in his right mind takes a human life lightly.
My father had lived through wars and troubles, and it left him with a sense that nothing lasted but what a man made of himself.
NO MAN KNOWS the hour of his ending, nor can he choose the place or the manner of his going. To each it is given to die proudly, to die well, and this is, indeed, the final measure of the man.
There was much talk of sermons, also, and I gathered from this, as well as what Yance had told me, that sermons had much to do with shaping of thinking. There were a stiff-necked, proud folk, not easily persuaded to any course not dictated by conscience, yet conscience could be a poor guide if accompanied by lack of knowledge.
There was something her father had said. “We do not own the land, Angie. We hold it in trust for tomorrow. We take our living from it, but we must leave it rich for your son and for his sons and for all of those who shall follow.
The buzzards were neutral. No matter who won down there, they would win. They had but to wait.
I wished I had a book. It had been so long since I had read. Could a man forget how to read?
You killed Rice Wheeler,” he said, “the Panhandle gunman. “He should have stayed in the Panhandle,” I said.
He was still a boy, but there was steel in him. The eyes into which she looked now were cool, but they were eyes strangely mature. “I reckon I’ll stay, ma’am. Down where I come from, we don’t back water for no man.
Women! He thought, who could ever figure them out? No matter what a man said, he was always in the wrong. There was no logic in them.
No man is a complete ruler or dictator. He is only the mouthpiece for the wishes of his followers. As long as he expresses those wishes, he leads them.
It is my privilege. It is so written.
Yet moaning and wailing was not my way. I had never complained, for who cares for complaints? If something is wrong, one does something.
Any time a man comes along and says ‘Indians’ or ‘Mexicans’ or ‘Englishmen’ he’s bound to be wrong. Each man is a person unto himself, and you’ll find good, bad, and indifferent wherever you go.
For three days, Shandy Gamble had been lying on his back in the Perigord House awaiting the stranger in the black mustache. Nichols, his name was, and if they were ever going to start cattle buying they had better be moving. The season was already late.
Once he paused near a small stream to watch a dipper bob up and down on a rock. He saw a school of trout lurking in a shady place where a branch hung low on the water. No amount of seeing ever made nature old to him, and he was conscious of every movement and sound.
You believe in heroes?” Corvino looked at him thoughtfully. “I cannot believe in anything else. A man needs heroes. He needs to believe in strength, nobility and courage. Otherwise we become sheep to be herded to the slaughterhouse of death. I believe this. I am a soldier. I try to fight for the right cause. Sometimes it is hard to know.
It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy.
The trouble with being on the wrong side of the law was the kind of company you had to keep.
I was raised up where folks looked to the hills, only up where we came from you hadn’t chance to look much higher, we were that near the top of the ridge.