Today I began the novel that I determined to be great.
Before exulatation had vanished, I felt as if I had been granted a marvellous privilege. Out of the inscrutable waters a beautiful fish had somehow leaped to show me fleetingly the life and spirit of his element.
Never insult seven men when all your packing is a six-shooter.
These critics who crucify me do not guess the littlest part of my sincerity. They must be burned in a blaze. I cannot learn from them.
Adam Larey gazed with hard and wondering eyes down the silent current of the red river upon which he meant to drift away into the desert.
Recipe For Greatness – To bear up under loss; To fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; To be victor over anger; To smile when tears are close; To resist disease and evil men and base instincts; To hate hate and to love love; To go on when it would seen good to die; To look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be. That is what any man can do, and be great.
Instinct may not be greater than reason, but it’s a million years older. Don’t fight your instincts so hard. If they were not good the God of Creation would not have given them to you.
Unhappiness is only a change. Happiness itself is only change. So what does it matter? The great thing is to see life – to understand – to feel – to work – to fight – to endure.
Instantly a thick blackness seemed to enfold her and silence as of a dead world settled down upon her. Drowsy as she was she could not close her eyes nor refrain from listening. Darkness and silence were tangible things. She felt them. And they seemed suddenly potent with magic charm to still the tumult of her, to sooth and rest, to create thought she had never thought before. Rest was more than selfish indulgence. Loneliness was necessary to gain conciseness of the soul.
Socialism reached into her mind, to be rejected. She had never understood it clearly, but it seemed to her a state of mind where dissatisfied men and women wanted to share what harder working or more gifted people possessed.
With distrust came suspicion and with suspicion came fear, and with fear came hate – and these, in already distorted minds, inflamed a hell.
With that they, and many others, left the hall and joined the moving crowd in the street. The night was delightfully cool. Stars shone white in a velvet sky. The dry wind from mountain and desert blew in their faces. Pan.
An awful sense of her deadness, of her soul-blighting selfishness, began to dawn upon her as something monstrous out of dim, gray obscurity.
Mister Hawe, you come along, not satisfied with ropin.
Fishing keeps men boys longer than any other pursuit.
Shut off your wind, Jack! And you, too, Blaze! I didn’t want you fellows to come here. But as you would come, you’ve got to shut up. This is my business.
And as he lost that softness of nature, so he lost his fear of men. He would watch for Oldring, biding his time, and he would kill this great black-bearded rustler who had held a girl in bondage, who had used her to his infamous ends.
When I rode – I rode like the wind,” she replied, “and never had time to stop for anything.
The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein’ the truth.
Her forefathers had been Vikings, savage chieftains who bore no cross and brooked no hindrance to their will.
The rugged fallow ground under her feet seemed to her to be a symbol of faith – faith that winter would come and pass – the spring sun and rain would burst the seeds of wheat – and another summer would see the golden fields of waving grain. If she did not live to see them, they would be there just the same; and so life and nature had faith in its promise. That strange whisper was to Lenore the whisper of God.