"There will always be folks who will talk, and the better you do in the world the more bad things they will say of you. Back there in the settlement … - Louis L'Amour

Remember that, son. The dogs bark, but the wagons go on their way, and if you’re going someplace you haven’t time to bother with barking dogs.

Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by archeologists of the future. Surely, the citizens and the rulers of Babylon and Rome did not see themselves as a passing phase. Each in its time believed it was the end-all of the world’s progression. I have no such feeling. Each age is a day that is dying, each one a dream that is fading. Someday, men — or some other intelligent creatures — will stand on the sites of New York or Los Angeles and wonder if anyone ever lived there.

"We will always have Reeses and Heseltines, and they will always seem big and brave to growing boys. They swagger and make loud noises in their own little circle, but they are only the coyotes that yap around the heels of the herd."
'Remember this, Shell, the coyotes aren't going anywhere, but the herd is, and so are the men who drive the herd.

And the two men walked down the street side by side, Ab Kale and his son.…