The Virginian

“When a man is kind to dumb animals, I always say he has got some good in him.”

“When you call me that, smile.”

“All America is divided into two classes - the quality and the equality. The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it.”

“But no earthly foot can step between a man and his destiny.”

Owen Wister


Ostensibly a love story, the novel really revolves around a highly mythologized version of the Johnson County War in 1890's Wyoming ... The novel takes the side of the large ranchers, and depicts the lynchings as frontier justice, meted out by the protagonist, who is a member of a natural aristocracy among men. Owen Wister was an American writer and historian, considered the "father" of western fiction. He is best remembered for writing The Virginian and a biography of Ulysses S. Grant.