On New Year's Resolutions

While fast approaching New Year's Day, talk will increase about New Year's resolutions.

Whenever I hear talk about making New Year's resolutions (I never make 'em myself), for some reason my mind drifts to a scene in the 1972 feature, The Cowboys starring John Wayne, Bruce Dern and Roscoe Lee Browne. The scene doesn't involve a resolution, but rather a prayer.

A band of desperadoes, led by Dern, steals a herd of cattle that Wayne was driving 400 miles to market with only Browne and a bunch of schoolboys to help. Wayne's character is killed and Browne is captured and is about to hung by Dern. Before he is to be hung, Browne says a prayer:

Jebediah Nightlinger (Roscoe Lee Browne): [praying to God before he's about to hanged by Asa Watts (Bruce Dern) and his gang] I regret trifling with married women. I'm thoroughly ashamed at cheating at cards. I deplore my occasional departures from the truth. Forgive me for taking your name in vain, my Saturday drunkenness, my Sunday sloth. Above all, forgive me for the men I've killed in anger...
[eyes shifting to Asa Watts]

Jebediah Nightlinger: ... and those I am about to.

Always loved that scene. Bruce Dern was at his scummiest in this movie.