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Albert Payson Terhune

Albert Payson Terhune Quotes

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Famous Albert Payson Terhune Quotes

“I feel like the perpetually rescued maiden in the old-fashioned novels or the moving pictures,” she laughed, straightening her hair. “First you save me from Roan Shively at the muzzle of a geological hammer, and now you catch me in my fall from a misses’-and-children’s-size cliff. Pretty soon, at this rate, the small boys at the back of the theater gallery will begin to clap every time the film shows you appearing on the horizon when I am in any predicament…”

“When Lad died, in September of 1918, I collected the ten or twelve yarns I had written about him, and I tried to sell the collection as a book under the name, Lad: A Dog. I was told that there had been no worthwhile dog books since Bob, Son Of Battle and The Call Of The Wild and that the public did not want that kind of fiction. There was no demand; there was no possible profit. Any volume with a canine hero was foredoomed to fall flat.”

“It is the custom to sneer at mongrels and to feel shame in confessing the ownership of one of them. And there could not be a worse mistake. The mongrel has more cleverness, more stamina, and sometimes more beauty than any thoroughbred. The best type of mongrel is often the very best dog alive. Instead of being ashamed of owning one, be ashamed that you have not brought out his million fine traits of smartness and stanchness and general worth-whileness. Those traits are all there if you’ll both to look for them.”

“I have learned, as has many another better writer, to summon inspiration to my call as soon as I begin my day's stint, and not to hang around waiting for it. Inspiration is merely a pretty phrase for the zest to work. And it can be cultivated by anyone who has the patience to try. Inspiration that will not come at its possessor's summons is like a dog that cannot be trained to obey. The sooner both are gotten rid of, the better.”