You might as well learn that a man who catches fish or shoots game has got to make it fit to eat before he sleeps. Otherwise it’s all a waste and a sin to take it if you can’t use it.

Any time a boy is ready to learn about guns is the time he’s ready, no matter how young he is, and you can’t start too young to learn how to be careful.

Never knew a man not to be improved by a dog.

If a man does away with his traditional way of living and throws away his good customs, he had better first make certain that he has something of value to replace them.

'The best thing about hunting and fishing,' the Old Man said, 'is that you don't have to actually do it to enjoy it. You can go to bed every night thinking about how much fun you had twenty years ago, and it all comes back clear as moonlight.'

But phony, Hemingway was not, and poseur he was not. He did not shoot lions and leopards because he was searching for the answer to life. He shot lions and leopards because he bloody well liked to hunt and shoot, and killing was the best punctuation mark at the end of the intricate and fascinating process of hunting.

If they keep exposing you to education, you might even realize some day that man becomes immortal only in what he writes on paper, or hacks into rock, or slabbers onto a canvas, or pulls out of a piano.