Country people tend to consider that they have a corner on righteousness and to distrust most manifestations of cleverness, while people in the city are leery of righteousness but ascribe to themselves all manner of cleverness. — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same. — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
When I was 18 I worked with the Ringling Brothers circus, taking care of menagerie animals. I used to rather deliberately risk my life… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn't brotherly -- who lived mostly under his parents' roof . . . who advocated one day's work and six days "off" as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown . . . is probably… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share
There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share
Sophistication" is another word for that inventive mix of tolerance, resilience, and resourcefulness city people develop. — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
Once I climbed into a mountain lion's cage and she bounded at me and put her paw on my face, but she kept her… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
Poetry is engendered in solitude, so what better meter for it than the clip of a buckskin horse? — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans. — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people… — Edward Hoagland Copy Share Image
