“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.”
“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.”
“Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him.”
“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”
“A good beginning makes a good end.”
“To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
“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.”
“Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.”
“No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.”
“What is second sight? A gift? A training? Or is it simply that suddenly within the brain a thousand impressions, ideas, sights, sounds, and smells coincide to provide an impression of what is to be? The mind gathers its grain in all fields, storing i”
“Neither drink (coffee or tea) was known in Frankish lands, but seated in the coffeehouses, I drank of each at various times, twirling my mustache and listening with attention to that headier draught, the wine of the intellect, that sweet and bitter j”
“A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.”
“To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.”
“Being scared can keep a man from getting killed, and often makes a better fighter of him”
“Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.”
“No one can get an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.”
“He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.”
“This -- this was what made life: a moment of quiet, the water falling in the fountain, the girl's voice... a moment of captured beauty. He who is truly wise will never permit such moments to escape.”
“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning.”
“Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.”
“Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity and movement and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.”
“Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wastelands to the spirit.”
“All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I.”
“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.”
A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.
The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.
For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become a reality.
Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, their lack of good fortunes or the quirks of fate. Everyone has within them the power to say, "This I am today, that I shall become tomorrow." The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
There are, in the affairs of men and nations, inexorable tides from which they cannot remain aloof.
One never realizes how
much and how little he knows
until he starts talking.
In my years of wandering about in wild places, often alone, I have never taken unnecessary chances, and anyone who does is a fool. Recklessness is not bravery. I am inclined to agree with the explorer Roald Amundsen [first to reach the South Pole] that what we call adventure is simply bad planning.
It seems to me a man comes into this world with a little ready raw material - himself. his folks can only give him a sort of push, and a mite of teaching, but in the long run what a man becomes is his own problem. there've all ways been hard times, there've all ways been wars and troubles - famin, disease, and such-like - and some folks are born with money some with none. in the end it's up to the man what he becomes, and none of those other things matter. in horses, dogs, and men it is character that counts.
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