Robert Ruark Quotes

“'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.'”

— Robert Ruark

“Rich, 'the Old Man said dreamily, 'is not baying after what you can't have. Rich is having the time to do what you want to do. Rich is a little whiskey to drink and some food to eat and a roof over your head and a fish pole and a boat and a gun and a dollar for a box of shells. Rich is not owing any money to anybody, and not spending what you haven't got.”

— Robert Ruark

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

— Robert Ruark

“When I get up at five in the morning to go fishing, I wake my wife up and ask, 'What'll it be dear, sex or fishing?' And she says, Don't forget your waders.'”

— Robert Ruark

“Hunting is the noblest sport yet devised by the hand of man. There were mighty hunters in the Bible, and all the caves where the cave men lived are full of carvings of assorted game the head of the house drug home. If you hunt to eat, or hunt for sport for something fine, something that will make you proud, and make you remember every single detail of the day you found him and shot him, that is good too.”

— Robert Ruark

“Time just seems to fly away for a boy. That, I s'pose, is why one day you wake up suddenly and you ain't a boy any longer.”

— Robert Ruark

“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.”

— Robert Ruark

“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.”

— Robert Ruark

“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.”

— Robert Ruark

“A fish, which you can't see, deep down in the water, is a kind of symbol of peace on earth, good will to yourself. Fishing gives a man ... some time to collect his thoughts and reaarange them kind of neatly, in an orderly fashion. Once the bait is on the hook and the boat is anchored, there's nothing to interfere with thinking except an occasional bite”

— Robert Ruark

“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.”

— Robert Ruark

A man can build a staunch reputation for honesty by admitting he was in error, especially when he gets caught at it.

— Robert Ruark

“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.”

— Robert Ruark

Texan is what you are, not what you were or might be.

— Robert Ruark