All The Pretty Horses Quotes

• Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Time, Real, Healing

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.139, Pan Macmillan

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• He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Heart, Squares, Cafes

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.291, Pan Macmillan

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• Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Lying, Waiting, Wish

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.244, Pan Macmillan

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• There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Women, Honor, May

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.141, Pan Macmillan

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• They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Stars, Dark, Night

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.31, Pan Macmillan

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• Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Choices, Decision, Dumb

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

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• In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Groups, Might, Has Beens

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.227, Pan Macmillan

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• It is supposed to true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and love of blood.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Believe, Blood, Knowing

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• It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Betrayal, Coward, Firsts

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.224, Pan Macmillan

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• A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Horse, Jobs, Men

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.92, Pan Macmillan

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• In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Believe, Blood, Knowing

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.227, Pan Macmillan

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• Scared money can’t win and a worried man can’t love.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Winning, Men, Scared

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• He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Said, Misfortunes

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.223, Pan Macmillan

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• Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Events, Shapes, Patterns

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.219, Pan Macmillan

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• He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Pain, Flower, Heart

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.268, Pan Macmillan

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• There is no greater monster than reason.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Monsters, Reason, Greater

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.141, Pan Macmillan

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• He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Believe, Saws, Cold

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.260, Pan Macmillan

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• For me the world has always been more of a puppet show. But when one looks behind the curtain and traces the strings upward he finds they terminate in the hands of yet other puppets, themselves with their own strings which trace upward in turn, and so on. In my own life I saw these strings whose origins were endless enact the deaths of great men in violence and madness. Enact the ruin of a nation.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Men, Hands, World

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy: Picador Classic”, p.219, Pan Macmillan

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• Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Courage, Morning, Betrayal

  Cormac McCarthy (1992). “All the Pretty Horses”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Stupid, Men, Thinking

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.197, Pan Macmillan

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• He imagined the pain of the world to be like some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Pain, Soul, Might

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.263, Pan Macmillan

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• In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Ends, Sentiments

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.244, Pan Macmillan

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• The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Grief, Community, Sorrow

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.226, Pan Macmillan

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• What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenhearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise. (All the Pretty Horses)

  Cormac McCarthy

  Horse, Men, Blood

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• My daddy used to tell me not to chew on somethin that was eatin you.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Daddy, Used

  "All the Pretty Horses: Book 1 of The Border Trilogy".

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