The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains
Owen Wister
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader...”
“It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the eternal inequality of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little men artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we acknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, "Let the best man win, whoever he is." Let the best man win! That is America's word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing”
“When a man is kind to dumb animals, I always say he has got some good in him.”
“Here in flesh and blood was a truth which I had long believed in words, but never met before. The creature we call a gentleman lies deep in the heart of thousands that are born without chance to master the outward graces of the type.”
“I thought there should in truth be heavy damages for malpractice on human souls.”
“When you call me that, smile.”
“The cowboy has now gone to worlds invisible; the wind has blown away the white ashes of his campfires; but the empty sardine box lies rusting over the face of the Western earth.”
“I reckon some parsons have a right to tell you to be good. The bishop of this hyeh territory has a right. But I'll tell yu' this: a middlin' doctor is a pore thing, and a middlin' lawyer is a pore thing; but keep me from a middlin' man of God.”
“All America is divided into two classes - the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it.”
“Science! He [Dr. MacBride] doesn't know what Christianity is yet. I've entertained many guests, but none - The whole secret," broke off Judge Henry, "Lies in the way you treat people. As soon as you treat men as your brothers, they are ready to acknowledge you - if you deserve it - as their superior. That's the whole bottom of Christianity, and that's what our missionary will never know.”
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