Death and worse happened on the plains.

You know Deets is like me - he's not one to quit on a garment just because it's got a little age - spoken by Augustus McCrae

In times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analagous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.

Though loyal and able and brave, Pea had never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look surprised when he got kicked.

A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

The older the violin, the sweeter the music.