Walter Van Tilburg Clark Quotes

• “True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has developed with mankind ... If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “Then our crime's worse than a murderer's. His act puts him outside the law, but keeps the law intact. Ours would weaken the law.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “Places, like people, have their beginnings and have also their endings.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “We desire justice, and justice has never been obtained in haste and strong feeling.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “He proved that it was equally true if the disregard was by a ruler or by a people. "It spreads like a disease," he said. "And it's infinitely more deadly when the law is disregarded by men pretending to act for justice than when it's simply inefficient, or even when its elected administrator's are crooked.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “That hatred of the railroad was Winder’s only original notion, and when he got mad that always came in some way. Everything else was what he’d heard somebody, or most everybody, say, only he always got angry enough to make it sound like a conviction.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “Nothing imaginative ever happens to five people at once, because each is up to only one-fifth of his personal intelligence and perception. A crowd is never equal to the intelligence of any one of its members.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “It is possible to insult Americans?”
  “They are automatically insulted and enraged,” said the young composer. “They form splenetic organizations by the hundreds, and write letters to periodicals and congressmen. They gather in mobs and pay no attention. They hang people without trial and shoot citizens down with machine guns out of passing cars. They will despise you because you do not eat the same things they eat for breakfast. They even apply indifference.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “Cold wind,” I began. He looked at me as if I’d said something important. Then he said, “It’s more than wind,” and stared ahead of him again. “Maybe,” I said. I didn’t get his drift, but if he wanted to talk, “maybe” shouldn’t stop him. “It’s a lot more,” he said, as if I’d contradicted him. “You can’t go hunting men like coyotes after rabbits and not feel anything about it. Not without being like any other animal. The worst animal.” “There’s a difference; we have reasons.” “Names for the same thing,” he said sharply. “Does that make us any better? Worse, I’d say. At least coyotes don’t make excuses.”

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• “She wasn’t given to thinking very far, but she did a lot of intelligent feeling.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “He had lost the bright gods, and he had not been accepted by the dark. He was in a no soul’s land, and in its isolation his own soul was withdrawn, small and heavy as a stone within him, and about his evil deed. No wonder it could not take wing and make the heralding music. That was the whole of reality now, the little stone inside, and outside the cold, dark ravine and the inescapable watcher.”

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• “It followed that the powers of light and darkness were not wholly and always opposed to one another.”

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• “Helen, who was wild to be doing, and who had no patience for the limitation of words, or of thoughts, or even of the body, though she trusted the body most.”

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• “You goin’?” he rasped at me, shaking his stick at the corner. “John, John,” the old lady clucked, “it don’t do for you to go gettin’ excited.” “I ain’t excited,” the old man twittered, pounding his stick on the road, “I ain’t excited; I’m jest plumb disgusted.” I’d stopped because he’d caught hold of my shirtsleeve. “You’re goin’, ain’t you?” he threatened me again. “It looks like it, dad,” I said.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “he is talking about the whole American society or, rather, the whole human society. And the horror lies in the irony: it is far easier to understand and forgive the brutal actions of slaves than it is to understand and forgive the brutal actions of men who think themselves free and act as slaves. Here is Clark’s most explicit criticism of the American Dream: the forms of law will not suffice if they are not based upon true individualism. And these Americans are not individuals nor are they concerned with individuals.”

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• “Just being is the main thing. Anything else is extra.”

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• “the north and south ends, there wasn’t much to Bridger’s Wells: Arthur Davies’ general store, the land and mining claims office, Canby’s saloon, the long, sagging Bridger Inn, with its double-decker porch, and the Union Church, square and bare as a New England meeting house, and set out on the west edge of town, as if it wanted to get as far from the other church as it could without being left alone.”

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• “Oh, we’re smart,” he said, the same way. “It’s the same thing,” he cried; “all we use it for is power. Yes, we’ve got them scared all right, all of them, except the tame things we’ve taken the souls out of. We’re the cocks of the dung-heap, all right; the bullies of the globe.” “We’re not hunting rabbits tonight,” I reminded him. “No; our own kind. A wolf wouldn’t do that; not a mangy coyote. That’s the hunting we like now, our own kind. The rest can’t excite us any more.” “We don’t have to hunt men often,” I told him. “Most people never have. They get along pretty well together.” “Oh, we love each other,” he said. “We labor for each other, suffer for each other, admire each other. We have all the pack instincts, all right, and nice names for them.”

  Walter Van Tilburg Clark

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• “Well?” “Don’t rush me,” Gil said. “Take your time,” Canby said. “It don’t look to me,” Gil said, “like you was so rushed you couldn’t wait!” “It’s not that. I hate to see a man who can’t make up his mind.” “What do you care?” “I either have to put them to bed or listen to their troubles, depending on what they drink,” Canby said. His mouth only opened a slit when he talked, and the words came out as if he enjoyed them, but had to lift a weight to get them started. “I ain’t lookin’ for either sleep or comfortin’,” Gil said. “And if I was, I wouldn’t come here for it.” “I feel better,” said Canby. “What’ll you have? Whisky?”

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• “Is it really so important to be different?”

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• “but you can feel awful guilty about nothing when the men you're with don't trust you.”

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• “Law is more than the words that put it on the books; law is more than any decisions that may be made from it; law is more than the particular code of it stated at any one time or in any one place or nation; more than any man, lawyer or judge, sheriff or jailer, who may represent it. True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has evolved with mankind. None of man's temples, none of his religions, none of his weapons, his tools, his arts his sciences, nothing else he has grown to, is so great a thing as his justice, his sense of justice.”

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• “I failed, he said, I got talking my ideas. It's my greatest failing.”

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• “I'm slow with a new idea, and want to think it over alone, where I'm sure it's the idea and not the man that's getting me.”

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