Owen Wister Quotations

When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have.

When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have.

With a gun against my belly I... I always smile.

Like Adam, our first conspicuous ancestor, I must begin, and lay the blame upon a woman; I am glad to recognize that I differ from the father of my sex in no important particular, being as manlike as most of his sons.

In the United States 'First' and 'Second' class can't be painted on railroad cars, for all passengers, being Americans, are equal and it would be 'unAmerican.' But paint 'Pullman' on a car and everyone is satisfied.

An aristocrat in morals as in mind.

I thought there should in truth be heavy damages for malpractice on human souls.

I reckon some parsons have a right to tell yu' 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.

But no earthly foot can step between a man and his destiny.

It may be that them whose pleasure brings you into this world owes you a living, but it don't mean the world is responsible.

It was neither preaching nor praying that made a better man of me, but one or two people who believed in me better than I deserved, and I hated to disappoint them.

When a man ain't got no ideas of his own, he'd ought to be kind o' careful who he borrows 'em from.

Said Aristotle unto Plato, 'Have another sweet potato?' Said Plato unto Aristotle, 'Thank you, I prefer the bottle.'