Edwin Markham

“In my boyhood, cattle-raising ran almost neck and neck with grain-raising. In my secluded little valley in the Suisun Hills, the rodeo was the most exhilarating spectacle in the round year.”

“He fed his spirit with the bread of books”

“The crest and crowning of all good, Life's final star, is brotherhood.”

“Force cannot transmit a moral principle: moral ideas can be received only through the reason of the heart.”

“To throw oneself to the side of the oppressed is the only dignified thing to do in life.”

“Greed and Gain, grim guardians of the great god Mammon, continually cry in the ears of the poor, 'Give us your little ones!' And forever do the poor push out their little ones at the imperious ukase, feeding the children to a blind Hunger that is never filled.”

“Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true!”

“Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.”

“We have ground for believing that a noble form of socialism existed among the prehistoric and primitive people on this planet, the people that broke into restless groups after the ancient Deluge and went wandering over the globe. For we find a socialist tendency in all the barbaric tribes of earth.”

“Few cities have been more definitely impressed upon the imagination of the world than San Francisco, this gray-hilled city on the peninsula by the hospitable bay, where Saint Francis protects the ships as he protected the birds of Assisi.”

“Use and beauty - these should be the ends of all human effort. But the competitive struggle swings us away from this high ground and plunges us into a quagmire fight for cheap goods and cheap labor.”

“It is better to rust out than wear out.”

“Oft when the white, still dawn lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, I have felt it like a glory in my heart.”

“We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.”

“Is it not a grotesque civilization which sends missionaries across the sea to save the souls of the heathen, and yet permits conditions at home that debauch the children at our very doors?”

“Spain held the doctrine (and was right in holding it) that every human enterprise should stand on two pillars - the temporal and the spiritual. To depend upon one of these pillars alone is to call down final failure upon any undertaking.”

“For all your days be prepared, and meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil, bear - when you are the hammer, strike.”

“The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?”

“Bierce radiates brilliancy, and perhaps no other man of letters ever had a more ready command of condensed expression. For him, each word has its unique place in the peerage of words, and he would not use a word out of place any sooner than he would thrust an ape into a captain's saddle.”

“He drew a circle that shut me out-Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout.But love and I had the wit to win:We drew a circle and took him In !From the poem " Outwitted”