Great Throughts Treasury

"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."

"My future is one I must make myself."

"My voice isn't much, but I often used to tell folks I was a singer, and that I'd sung for crowds of up to three thousand. I didn't tell them I was talking of cows, but they heard my voice and probably guessed."

"Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning."

"Never let an enemy get set.... Never let him move from a secure position or give him time to move his pieces on the chessboard."

"Never underestimate an enemy!"

"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."

"No man is lost while he yet lives."

"No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself."

"Nobody should ever try to second-guess history; the facts are fantastic enough."

"Now Logan was a Clinch Mountain Sackett, and those boys from Clinch Mountain are rougher than a cob. There were those who called Logan an outlaw, but he was family, and he was handy with a shooting iron. I wrote to him too."

"Now, tomorrow Miss Laurie McCrae and me, we have an appointment with a sky pilot who will make it proper for us to travel in double harness."

"Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. I read on buses, trains, and plains. 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?"

"Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."

"One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter ? who was a child at the time ? asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!""

"One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives."

"One thing we learned. To make a start and keep plugging. When I had fights at school, the little while I went, I just bowed my neck and kept swinging until something hit the dirt. Sometimes it was me, but I always got up."

"One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible."

"Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance."

"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.'"

"One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend."

"Pa, he always said a man had to look spry for himself, because nobody would do it for him; your opportunities didn't come knocking around, you had to hunt them down and hog-time them."

"Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others."

"Politics is the art of making civilization work."

"Raindrops felt his cheeks with blind, questing fingers...the black trunks of the trees were like iron bars against the gray of gathering pools."

"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."

"Personally, I do not believe the human mind has any limits but those we impose ourselves."

"Revenge could steal a man's life until there was nothing left but emptiness."

"She had believed the land was her enemy, and she struggled against it, but you could not make war against a land any more than you could against the sea. One had to learn to live with it, to belong to it, to fit into its seasons and its ways."

"Somebody comin', he said softly. Five or six, maybe. His words were spoken over an empty fire, for each of us vanished ghostlike into the surrounding darkness. I, fortunately, had the presence of mind to retain my coffee. With the Ferguson rifle in my right hand, I drank coffee from the cup in my left."

"She handed him the blankets and the ground sheet and he shook them out, then put them down under the trees. Angie got down on her knees and spread the ground sheet over the leaves, then the blankets. 'You never forget do you? I mean about seeing things first.' 'Hope I never.' He was oddly uncomfortable, hesitant. 'Good way to lose your hair, not noticing things.' He sat down and pulled off his boots. The cottonwoods whispered more softly. The squirrel gave one short inquiring chatter, then was silent. The lone coyote spoke to the sky and the stream rustled busily about the stones. A bit of mud fell into the stream with a faint plop. It was night and there was no sound. Or anyway, not very much. (p 154)"

"Some say opportunity knocks only once, That is not true. Opportunity knocks all the time, but you have to be ready for it. If the chance comes, you must have the equipment to take advantage of it."

"She looked at me, then sniffed. I might of knowed it. Clinch Mountain, ain't you? What was that, ma'am? I was startled. I said you're a Clinch Mountain Sackett, ain't you? I'd read your sign anywhere, boy. You're probably one of those no-account sons of Tarbil Sackett, ain't you? Grandson, ma'am."

"Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it."

"Someone has said that culture is what remains with you after you have forgotten all you have read, and I believe there is much truth in that."

"Squatting by the fire I tried to blink the sleep from my eyes while pouring a cup of coffee. It was hot, and black as the hinges of hell, but it tasted good."

"Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone."

"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on."

"The Apache don't have a word for love, he said. Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony? Tell me. Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say."

"The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever."

"The fact of the matter is that poor men do not often steal, and when they do, it is petty theft, something to eat or perhaps an item of clothing to keep them from the cold. Thieves are usually those who have something and want more."

"The cause of right is never lost, Leal. I've often thought the biggest damned fool in the world could to down in history as a great man if he would just consistently vote for the greatest good of the greatest number."

"The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination."

"The one law that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring."

"The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture."

"The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time."

"The sunset was spectacular. The sky streaked itself with rose and the region of the sun became an indescribable glory. All my life I have used words, and yet I find times when they are totally inadequate."

"The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding?"

"The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me, and nothing before me but hope."

"The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail."