Oakley Hall Quotes

The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.

Any man who has got himself set over others and don't have any responsibility to something bigger than him is a son of a bitch.

As one half of our nature seeks to create heroes to worship, the other must ceaselessly attempt to cast them down and discover evidence of feet-of-clay, in order to label them as mere lucky fellows, or as villains-were-the-facts-but-known, and the eminent and great are ground between the millstones of envy, and reduced again to common size.

For wine is the color of blood and the texture of tears, and you can drink it to warm your belly and piss it out to get rid of it. And forget the whole damned mess that is too much for any man to face.

Ah,the pure shine of a few moments of heroism, high courage, and derring-do! In its light we genuflect before the Hero, we bask inthe warmth of his Deeds, we tout him, shout him praises, deify him, and, in short, make of him what no mortal could ever be.

We are a race of tradition-lovers in a new land, of king-reverers in a Republic, of hero-worshipers in a society of mundane get-and-spend. It is a Country and a Time where any bank clerk or common laborer can become a famous outlaw, where an outlaw can in a very short time be sainted in song and story into a Robin Hood, where a Frontier Model Excalibur can be drawn from the block at any gunshop for twenty dollars.

Is not the semblance of guilt, however slight the tinge, already a corruption?

Cussing your daddy when he is crippled so he can't beat your teeth down your throat for it. Well, it is sire and dam in a man like a horse, and no way to get yourself a boy without there is half woman in him.

Hate can burn itself out in the first light of day as readily as love can.

You have been going on about pride like it was a bad thing, and I disagree with you. A man’s pride is about the only thing he has that’s worth having, and is what sets him apart from the pack. We have argued this before, Judge, and I guess I will say this time that a man that doesn’t have it is a pretty poor specimen and apt to take to whisky for the lack. For all whisky is, is pride you can pour in your belly.

Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence and death cut in stone? It is a terrible, lonely, loveless thing to know it, and see—as I realize now the doctor saw before me—that the only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things that drive men to their ends be ever stilled, or will they only thrive and grow and yet more hideously clash one against the other so long as man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered there to raise men’s hearts to false hopes forever?

He had never understood what was wrong and what was right, good and bad, what he wanted and did not want; he had never been able to solve the knotted snarl of his life because of the very complexity of that snarl, because of his indecision, because of the double responsibility he felt, and when, finally he had become man enough to solve it, it was too late, and too many forces had been set in motion.

Los hombres son como el maíz. El sol los quema, la lluvia los empapa, el invierno los congela y la Caballería los pisotea, pero a pesar de todo continúan creciendo. Y nada de eso importa mientras haya whisky.

I knew a man once who said it was all foolishness – that if you want to kill a man, why, kill him. Shoot him down from behind in the dark if you want to kill him. But don’t make a game with rules out of it. But he doesn’t understand. It is not that at all, for you don’t want to kill a man. It is only the rules that matter. It is holding strict to the rules that counts.” Blaisedell let his chair down suddenly, and the legs cracked upon the floor; he leaned forward with his face intent and strained, and Gannon felt the full force of his eyes. “Hold to them like you are walking on eggs,” he said. “So you know yourself you have played it fair and as best you could. As right as you could.

Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence and death cut in stone? It is a terrible, lonely, loveless thing to know it, and see—as I realize now the doctor saw before me—that the only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things that drive men to their ends be ever stilled, or will they only thrive and grow and yet more hideously clash one against the other so long as man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered there to raise men’s hearts to false hopes forever? This is the sky of Gethsemane, and that of Bethlehem has vanished with its star.

If you read novels you sympathize with people who are different kinds of people than you are.

It was a sad truth that all the masses of men in their causes would be led by ambitious men, by power-hungry, cunningly self serving men, rather than by the humanists, the idealists; and better led for it, he thought.

the only means by which field-grade officers can expect a promotion is combat.

I should think it might be difficult to possess a wife whom almost every other man in town has known so intimately, but no doubt True Love Conquers All.

In my life I have been a fool with liquor and a wise man with horses. I was born on a horse, or just off one anyway, for my mother died in a fall a month before she was due to be light of me, and they cut me from her there. Which was the last time I was throwed, except by whiskey.

Yes, you learn your lessons as they come your way... And when you have learned them all they can stick red-hot pokers in your wife and babies and you will only laugh to see it. Because you will know by then that people don't matter a damn. Men are like corn growing. The sun burns them up and the rain washes them out and the winter freezes them, and the cavalry tramps them down, but somehow they keep growing. And none of it matters a damn so long as the whisky holds out.

She’s married, too. Arch, I’ll bet she’s one of these rich bitches can’t live with their husbands.

I must face the fact, of course, that Public Opinion is not so unanimous as I would like to think. There are issues at stake, but as too often happens, we are apt to look to men as symbols rather than to the issues themselves.

Yet it is only one side of us, and we are cynical and envious too. As one half of our nature seeks to create heroes to worship, the other must ceaselessly attempt to cast them down and discover evidence of feet of clay, in order to label them as mere lucky fellows, or as villains-were-the-facts-but-known, and the eminent and great are ground between the millstones of envy, and reduced again to common size.

The retreating slow crack of Blaisedell's bootheels had been a sound as lonely, and as fatal.

The old town-meeting style of government was immediately proposed. The suggestion was met with high democratic enthusiasm, which, however, waned rapidly. I, who made this proposal myself, immediately came to regard it as patently unworkable here, in a place where passions in all things run high, and men go armed as they wear hats against the sun, and where such a large proportion of the inhabitants is of the ignorant and unwashed class, if not actual renegades from the law elsewhere.