Louis L'Amour Quotes - Page 2

I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is a category, and I do not like categories. It is a sort of pigeonhole or a label.
Louis L'Amour
It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy.
Louis L'Amour
I've a regard for law, although I do not always agree with it. Without law, man becomes a beast.
Louis L'Amour
Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions that faded with years until only a blur remained, and different memories would remember the past in different ways. A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions that faded with years until only a blur remained, and different memories would remember the past in different ways. A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.
Louis L'Amour
violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.
Louis L'Amour
People have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gamboling, thieving and robing are covered over folks will tolerate it longer than out right violence, even when the violence may be cleansing.
Louis L'Amour
Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.
Louis L'Amour
People only talk about how wonderful youth is when they have forgotten how hard it was.
Louis L'Amour
The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as ghost, specter, poltergeist, angel, devil, or spirit, might there not be something more our purposeful blindness has prevented us from understanding?We accept the fact that there may be other worlds out in space, but might there not be other worlds here? Other worlds, in other dimensions, coexistent with this? If there are other worlds parallel to ours, are all the doors closed? Or does one, here or there, stand ajar?
Louis L'Amour
Indeed, I find that distance lends perspective and I often write better of a place when I am some distance from it. One can be so overwhelmed by the forest as to miss seeing the trees.
Louis L'Amour
Folks can’t seem to realize that it isn’t a smooth talker we need in there but a steady man, a man with judgement. Any medicine-show man can spout words, if they are written for him. It takes no genius to sound well. To act right and at the right time is something else again.
Louis L'Amour
I've noticed...that whenever a man is asked to be realistic he is being asked to betray something in which he believes. It is the favorite argument of those who believe that only the end matters, not the means.
Louis L'Amour
...the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a crime. If a man is going to vote, if he's going to take part in his country and its government, then it's up to him to understand.
Louis L'Amour
Someone has said that culture is what remains with you after you have forgotten all you have read, and I believe there is much truth in that.
Louis L'Amour
...if we are to become a land of homes and people, evil men must not be allowed to persist in their evil.
Louis L'Amour
Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning.
Louis L'Amour
Now, tomorrow Miss Laurie McCrae and me, we have an appointment with a sky pilot who will make it proper for us to travel in double harness.
Louis L'Amour
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
Louis L'Amour
If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.
Louis L'Amour
It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask: Where am I going? What am I becoming? What do I wish to do and become?Most people whom I encountered were without purpose, people who had given themselves no goal. The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination.
Louis L'Amour
The wealthy and satisfied do not migrate, they stagnate.
Louis L'Amour
When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.
Louis L'Amour
...he'd had the foresight to know that a lot of the savages wear store-bought clothes.
Louis L'Amour
I'm sorry! I really am! I wanted to get out of this place! I want to live! I want to get away from here and never see it again! I hate everything about it!""You will hate the next place, too," I said. "What you are you will carry with you.
Louis L'Amour
You would be wise" he agreed, "To go to Cordoba or Toledo. The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is forever.
Louis L'Amour
So many things that are so dramatic or exciting when you read about them actually happen so simply and quietly. We humans like to consider ourselves important to creation and to the world, and we expect that whenever death comes it should be with a crash of thunder and wild shouts or something, or with soft music around and people looking grave and serious. We always have it that way in the theatre because it makes us believe in our importance. Most of our life is a matter of dressing ourselves up to believe in just that, dressing ourselves in attractive clothes, in titles, in reputations. Actually, at base we all realize that we're just a frightened bundle of animals, still afraid of the unknown, and still afraid of thousands of things that can separate us from life, and trying to shield ourselves from our own smallness.
Louis L'Amour
Kill him? Would that be it? No man knew better than he the tricks that Destiny plays on a man, or how often the right man dies at the wrong time and place. A man never wore a gun without inviting trouble, he never stepped into a street and began the gunman's walk without the full knowledge that he might be a shade too slow, that some small thing might disturb him just long enough!
Louis L'Amour
Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others.
Louis L'Amour
Many a small man is considered good while he remains small, but let power come to him, and he becomes a raging fury.
Louis L'Amour
Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.
Louis L'Amour
Personally, I do not believe the human mind has any limits but those we impose ourselves.
Louis L'Amour
It means little to anybody but us. We set store by kinfolk. We've our troubles from time to time, but when one of us is in danger, there'll be help from any who are around.
Louis L'Amour
Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it. I say this, who am Mathurin Kerbouchard, a homeless wanderer upon the earth's far roads. I speak as one who has known hunger and feast, poverty and riches, the glory of the sword and the humility of the defenseless. Hunger inspires no talent, and carried too far, it deadens the faculties and destroys initiative...
Louis L'Amour
Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area to what was happening elsewhere, and what had happened in the past. To view a period in isolation is to miss whatever message it has to offer.
Louis L'Amour
Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area to what was happening elsewhere, and what had happened in the past. To view a period in isolation is to miss whatever message it has to offer.
Louis L'Amour
There are many ways of fighting. Many a man or woman has waged a good war for truth, honor, and freedom, who did not shed blood in the process. Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is the violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.
Louis L'Amour
Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.
Louis L'Amour
Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.
Louis L'Amour
It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the canon of religious or political belief, and it is a poor sort of man who will permit others to dictate what he may or may not learn.
Louis L'Amour
It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the canon of religious or political belief, and it is a poor sort of man who will permit others to dictate what he may or may not learn.
Louis L'Amour
A journey is time suspended.
Louis L'Amour
Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.
Louis L'Amour
Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.
Louis L'Amour
Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one.
Louis L'Amour
Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance.
Louis L'Amour
Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
Louis L'Amour
If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.
Louis L'Amour
The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.
Louis L'Amour
The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?""Tell me.""Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say.
Louis L'Amour
The desert was a school, a school where each day, each hour, a final examination was offered, where failure meant death and the buzzards landed to correct the papers.
Louis L'Amour
It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man... and dead.
Louis L'Amour
Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.
Louis L'Amour
I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.
Louis L'Amour
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
Louis L'Amour
Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.
Louis L'Amour