We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action.
There is no miraculous change that takes place in a boy that makes him a man. He becomes a man by being a man.
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-tie them.
Victory is won not in miles, but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later win a little more.
It is better to have no emotion when it is work. Do what needs to be done, and do it coolly.
A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.
I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.
It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man... and dead.
The desert was a school, a school where each day, each hour, a final examination was offered, where failure meant death and the buzzards landed to correct the papers.
Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.
The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.
A journey is time suspended.
Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance.
Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.
Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.
Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.
Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.
I don't travel and tell stories, because that's not the way these days. But I write my books to be read aloud, and I think of myself in that oral tradition.
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.
