Some folks want the lights of cities, the admiration of women, and the fame that comes with success. Me, I just want the trail unwinding ahead of me, the view from the top of the ridge, and the smell of a wood-smoke fire.
A man ought to know enough to make a choice; and pa, he always advised me to look to both sides of a proposition.
There are men who prefer to keep trouble from a woman, but it seems to me that is neither reasonable nor wise. I’ve always respected the thinking of women, and also their ability to face up to trouble when it comes, and it shouldn’t be allowed to come on them unexpected.
He realized what a fool he had been. There could be no tolerating of evil. One stamped it out or the evil grew worse.
I’ve a regard for law, although I do not always agree with it. Without law, man becomes a beast.
The more one learns the more he understands his ignorance. I am simply an ignorant man, trying to lessen his ignorance.
They were four desperate men, made hard by life, cruel by nature, and driven to desperation by imprisonment.
All men wish to be captains, but few men wish to shoulder the burden of decision, and in coming here with these others, I had staked a claim that I must wall against misfortune.
Treat the earth kindly, my friends, and it will give you comfort, security, and all a man may need. If you plant a flake of gold in the earth, will anything come of it? But plant a seed and it will repay you many times over.
I learned then that many a victory is easier won with words than a sword – and the results are better.
The mind gathers its grain in all fields, storing it against a time of need, then suddenly it bursts into awareness, which men call inspiration or second sight or a gift.
The desert preserves. What other lands destroy, the desert keeps. It accepts dead things, holds them close, and draws away the rot that would destroy; given time, it mummifies or crystalizes.
This is a story of an adventure in education, pursued not under the best of conditions.
Such are the amenities of social life, which oft makes a liar of the best of men.
Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing and no drugs are needed.
Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they’ve missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I’ve ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one.
I was by no means a scholar, simply an interested reader with nothing to do but live and learn.
Well, I’ve often been wrong, but this time I was right and they had to pay mind to me or bury me, and mine is a breed that dies hard.
Need and desire have no connection,′ I said. ‘Many people desire things they do not need. Happiness can be measured by what one does not need, but often to see is to want.
For it is given that no man can do it all, that each must carry the future forward a few years and then pass the message on to him who follows.