Quote

A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity.

William Least Heat-Moon

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Least Heat-Moon
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: August 27
Historian
Writer
Kansas City
Missouri
Way
Couldn
Make
Circumstances
Jeopardy
Things
Question
Chuck
Men
Least
Circumstance
Life
Live
Quit
Right
Routine
Real
Quitting
Trying
Dignity

More quotes by William Least Heat-Moon

Image
Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he's going or understand what he sees?
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
The Lewis and Clark tale has all the all the elements that one would want to put into a movie. It has the, continual threat for life it's got the thread of Indians it's got disease. It has daily risk where these men may go under the water. It's got the fight with the elements. It's got the el the role of the unknown continually threatening them.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
One of the sweet and expectable aspects of life afloat is the perpetual present moment one lives in and a perception that time is nothing more than the current, an eternal flowing back to the sea.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
The thing that overwhelms me when I go out now is the sprawlation of America.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
Somewhere lives a bad Cajun cook, just as somewhere must live one last ivory-billed woodpecker. For me, I don't expect ever to encounter either one.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
Historical awareness is a kind of resurrection.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
No yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
Without the errors, wrong turns and blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
New ways of seeing can disclose new thingsĀ… But turn the question around. Do new things make for new ways of seeing?
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
Franchises and chains have come to dominate small communities, but those same chains have eliminated a lot of the greasy spoons, places you didn't want to eat in the first place.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing one's self a fool.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
The four horsemen of the prairie are tornado, locust, drought, and fire, and the greatest of these is fire, a rider with two faces because for everything taken, it makes a return in equal measure.
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
New ways of seeing can disclose new things: the radio telescope revealed quasars and pulsars, and the scanning electron microscope showed the whiskers of the dust mite. But turn the question around: Do new things make for new ways of seeing?
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
...who can say where a voyage starts - not the the actual passage but the dream of a journey and its urge to find a way?
William Least Heat-Moon
Image
Boredom lies only with the traveler's limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough. After a while, I found my perception limited.
William Least Heat-Moon