In a wide-open land like this where law was a local thing and no officer wanted to spread himself any further than his own district, a man could do just about what he was big enough to do, or that he was fast enough with a gun to do.  The only restraint there was on any man outside of the settled communities was his own moral outlook and the strength of the men with him.

A rustler, if caught in the act, was usually hung to the nearest tree.  Nobody had time to ride a hundred miles to a court house or to go back for the trial, and there were many officers who preferred it that way.

...it runs in the blood of a man that he should care for womenfolk.  It's a need in him, deep as motherhood to a woman, and it's a thing folks are likely to forget.  A man with nobody to care for is as lonesome as a lost hound dog, and as useless.  If he's to feel of an to himself, he's got to feel he's needed, feel he stands between somebody and any trouble.

How much can a man endure?  How long could a man continue?  These things I asked myself, for I am a questioning man, yet even as I asked the answers were there before me.  If he be a man indeed, he must always go on, he must always endure.  Death is an end to torture, to struggle, to suffering, but it is also an end to warmth, light, the beauty of a running horse, the smell of damp leaves, of gunpowder, the walk of a woman when she knows someone watches... these things, too, are gone.

There's a saying that when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns.

Now I hold by the Good Book, but in some ways I am closer to the Old Testament than the New.  I believe in forgiving one's enemies, but keep your hand on your gun while you do it, mentally, at least.  Because while you are forgiving him he may be studying ways to get at you.

A man who starts imagining that others think good because he does is simply out of his mind.

We don't have so many words as you... so we have to make those we have stand up and do tricks.  I never figured language was any stone-cold thing anyway.  Its to provide meaning, to tell other folks what you have in mind, and there's no reason why if a man is short a word he can't invent one.  When we speak of beans that have been shelled out of the pod we call 'em shuck-beans, because they've been shucked.  It's simple, if you look at it.