Gun

Famous quotes containing the word gun:

    What cannot stand must fall; and the measure of our sincerity and therefore of the respect of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard in the defence of our right. An old farmer, my neighbor across the fence, when I ask him if he is not going to town-meeting, says: “No, ‘t is no use balloting, for it will not stay; but what you do with the gun will stay so.”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Tall tales” were told of the sociability of the Texans, one even going so far as to picture a member of the Austin colony forcing a stranger at the point of a gun to visit him.
    —Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)