In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command.

Yet higher religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is essentially experience and recognized the necessity of experience as its foundation long before science learnt to do so.

If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

But only a brief moment is granted to the brave one breath or two, whose wage is the long nights of the grave.

The truth is that the religious and the scientific processes, though involving different methods, are identical in their final aim. Both aim at reaching the most real.

Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy.

Physiologically less violent and psychologically more suitable to a concrete type of mind.

Why hast thou made me born in this country, The inhabitant of which is satisfied with being a slave?

Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent cannot be based on illusions.

But the perception of life as an organic unity is a slow achievement, and depends for its growth on a people's entry into the main current of world-events.

Alas for a love whose fire is extinct, A love that was born in the Holy Place and died in the house of idols!

I said, "The thing we quested after is never attained." He said, "The unattainable - that thing is my desire!

If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.

It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” ~spoken by Augustus McCrae

If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.

The older the violin, the sweeter the music.

Yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back.

I'm sure partial to the evening,' Augustus said. 'The evening and the morning. If we just didn't have to have the rest of the dern day I'd be a lot happier.

It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.

If I had a mind to rent pigs, I'd be mighty upset. A man that likes to rent pigs won't be stopped.

It's like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight, he added

Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.

I never met a soul in this world as normal as me.

Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.

I think its a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight.

Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you're a genius -- Dostoyevsky perhaps.

Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime.

Nobody run off with her,” Roscoe said. "She just run off with herself, I guess.

But just let me tell you something, son, a woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose. So you better just get over it.

I hate rude behavior in a man,' he explained in his quiet, unassuming drawl. 'I won't tolerate it.' He politely tipped his hat, and rode away.

From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.

The reason men are so awful is because some woman has spoiled them.

There isn't a thought in my head I care to be alone with for more than five minutes.

A man who wouldn't cheat for a poke don't want one bad enough. --Augustus "Gus" McCrae

Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity--they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.

Uva uvum vivendo varia fit

The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters

I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't much of a recommendation for it.

By the time the shade had reached the river, Augustus would have mellowed with the evening and be ready for some intelligent conversation, which usually involved talking to himself.

You know Deets is like me - he's not one to quit on a garment just because it's got a little age - spoken by Augustus McCrae

You don't look strong enough to trouble nobody around here.... We grow our own troubles--it would be a novelty to have some we ain't already used to.

They don't know it, but the wrath of the Lord is about to descend upon them.

Who asked them dern pigs?” he said. “I guess they tracked us,” Augustus said. “They’re enterprising pigs.

Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.

I suppose you set up reading the Good Book all night-spoken by Woodrow Call

You don't get the pint, Woodrow, I've walked the earth in my pride all these years. If that's lost, then let the rest be lost with it. There's certain things my vanity won't abide.

It was inconsiderate, she thought, how blandly people mentioned the future in the sick rooms. Phrases like next summer were always popping out; people made such assumptions about their own continuity.

My main skills are talking and cooking biscuits,' Augustus said. 'And getting drunk on the porch.

Monkey John looked at the dead boy. "By God, life is cheap up here on the goddamned Canadian River." "Cheap," Blue Duck answered. "And it might get cheaper.