Theodore Roosevelt

Naturally, there are chapters of my autobiography which cannot now be written.

The venomous serpent was helpless; the fearsome master of the wild life of the forest, the deadly foe of humankind, was itself held in the grip of death.

His heart must thrill for the saddle and not for the hearthstone.

The difficulty in organizing was not in selecting, but in rejecting men.

He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness.

The head with its short muzzle, staring malignant eyes, and gaping, cruelly armed jaws, is the embodiment of evil ferocity; and the actions of the fish exactly match its looks.

The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.

They were a splendid set of men, these Southwesterners⁠—tall and sinewy, with resolute, weather-beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man straight in the face without flinching.

But I am not a rhinoceros mind reader, and its actions were such as to warrant my regarding it as a suspicious character.

A full-foliaged tree of vivid green, its round surface crowded with these birds, as if it had suddenly blossomed with huge white flowers, is a sight worth seeing.

Dim, vast, mysterious, the canyon lay in the shimmering radiance.

Then there was Micah Jenkins, the captain of Troop K, a gentle and courteous South Carolinian, on whom danger acted like wine.

It is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office.

It was probable that hardship lay in the future; but the day was our own, and the day was pleasant.

“They think they know best and needn’t obey me unless I have a nosebag full of rocks,” observed Uncle Jim.

Some were professional gamblers, and, on the other hand, no less than four were or had been Baptist or Methodist clergymen⁠—and proved first-class fighters, too, by the way.

Let him remember, by the way, that the unforgivable crime is soft hitting.

There was something sinister and evil in the dark stillness of the grove; it seemed as if sentient beings had writhed themselves round and were strangling other sentient beings.

Above them, in the lower branches, stood the big horse-killing cat, the destroyer of the deer, the lord of stealthy murder, facing his doom with a heart both craven and cruel.

An experience in following in the trail of an enemy who might flee at one stretch through fifty miles of deathlike desert was a good school out of which to come with profound indifference for the ordinary hardships of campaigning.