Louis L'Amour Quotes & Sayings

the way of men. One fights one's battles alone, not asking mercy nor expecting help. — Louis L'Amour

I never liked the term mystic as applied to someone or a way of thought. It covers something very profound and an awful lot of nonsense passes as profound thought. — 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

Avoid conflict and trouble, for enough of it fetches to a man without his asking. — Louis L'Amour

Such are the amenities of social life, which oft makes a liar of the best of men. — Louis L'Amour

Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone. — Louis L'Amour

There are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices. — Louis L'Amour

He wasn't tough. A tough man has to win and lose. He has to come up after being knocked down, he has to have taken a few beatings, and know what it means to win the hard way. Anybody, he said dryly, can knock a man down. When you've been knocked down at least three times yourself, and then got up and floored the other man, then you can figure you're a tough hombre. — Louis L'Amour

A move well planned is a move half-done, and I tried to think through every phase. We — 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

Who mentioned the Church? On the contrary, I have great respect for religion. My objection is to those who are against so many things and for so little. — Louis L'Amour

Neely grumbled. 'They [Indians] are a murdering lot of savages, and no mention of them in the Bible.'
'What has that to do with it?' John Sampson asked.
'If there's no mention of them,' Neely said, 'they are animals, not men.'
'I don't recall any mention of the English, either,' I said mildly.
He gave me a mean look, then changed the subject. — Louis L'Amour

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning. — Louis L'Amour

When a man lives with the wilderness he comes to an acceptance of death as a part of living, he sees the leaves fall and rot away to build the soil for other trees and plants to be born. The leaves gather strength from sun and rain, gathering the capital on which they live to return it to the soil when they die. Only for a time have they borrowed their life from the sum of things, using their small portion of sun, earth, and rain, some of the chemicals that go into their being - all to be paid back when death comes. All to be used again and again. — Louis L'Amour

Books are the building blocks of civilization, for without the written word, a man knows nothing beyond what occurs during his own brief years and, perhaps, in a few tales his parents tell him. — Louis L'Amour

I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn. — 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

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

Can you see the future, Kerbouchard?"
"Who would wish to? Our lives hold a veil between anticipation and horror. Anticipation is the carrot suspended before the jackass to keep him moving forward. Horror is what he would see if he took his eyes off the carrot. — Louis L'Amour

No. Until man can order his own affairs, until he ceases to prey on his brothers, he will need someone to maintain order. A lawman is not a restraint, but a freedom, a liberation. He restrains only those who would break the laws and provides freedom for the rest of us to work, to laugh, to sing, to play in peace. — Louis L'Amour

Her eyes went again to the man in black. He had removed his hat when he seated himself and she noticed that his hair was black and curly. He was a lean, powerfully built man, probably larger than he looked while seated. Her eyes trailed again to the bandage. "You ... you've hurt yourself!" she exclaimed. "Your shoulder!" Embarrassed — Louis L'Amour

You are your own best teacher. My advice is to question all things. Seek for answers, and when you find what seems to be an answer, question that, too. — Louis L'Amour

But a long time ago I made me a rule: I let people do what they want to do. — Louis L'Amour

Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning. — Louis L'Amour

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place. — Louis L'Amour

When the raw, harsh liquor had cut the dust from his throat he looked up at a nearby — Louis L'Amour

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen. — Louis L'Amour

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you. — Louis L'Amour

This was a big country needing big men and women to live in it, and there was no place out here for the frightened or the mean. — Louis L'Amour

Since I was a small boy, I had watched that forest for enemies or for game, and I knew its every mood and shading, how the sunlight fell through the leaves and where the shadows gathered. It held no mysteries for me but much of memory. I had played there as a child with Yance, Jubal, and Brian, later with Noelle. We had climbed its trees, picked berries there, and played hide-and-seek under its branches. — Louis L'Amour

The mind is a basket ... if you put nothing in, you get nothing out. — Louis L'Amour

Victory is not won in miles but in inches. — Louis L'Amour

No man ever raised a monument to a cynic or wrote a poem about a man without faith. — Louis L'Amour

What we have most to fear, I believe, are those within our own borders who think less of country than of themselves, who are ambitious for money, for power, for land. Some of these men would subvert anything, anything at all, my dear sir, for their own profit. They would even twist the laws of their own country in their desire to acquire wealth or power. — 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

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember. — Louis L'Amour

Not even a marshrat will trust itself to one hole only, so always have an escape route, and more than one, if it can be. — Louis L'Amour

Actors, politicians, and writers-all of us are but creatures of the hour. Long-lasting fame comes to but few. — Louis L'Amour

Treat the earth kindly, my friends, and it will give you comfort, security, and all a man may need. If you plant a flake of gold in the earth, will anything come of it? But plant a seed and it will repay you many times over. — Louis L'Amour

A ship does not sail with yesterday's wind. — Louis L'Amour

He was realizing how cheap are the principles for which we do not have to fight, how easy it is to establish codes when all the while our freedom to talk had been fought and bled for by others. — Louis L'Amour

Adventure is nothing but a romantic name for trouble. — Louis L'Amour

If at any time your Prince should pretend your position with him is sure, begin from that moment to feel unsure. — Louis L'Amour

A good beginning makes a good end. — Louis L'Amour

The things a man will wish for are harder to leave behind than all his wants ... — 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

Women! He thought, who could ever figure them out? No matter what a man said, he was always in the wrong. There was no logic in them. — Louis L'Amour

Once he paused near a small stream to watch a dipper bob up and down on a rock. He saw a school of trout lurking in a shady place where a branch hung low on the water. No amount of seeing ever made nature old to him, and he was conscious of every movement and sound. — Louis L'Amour

There are men who prefer to keep trouble from a woman, but it seems to me that is neither reasonable nor wise. I've always respected the thinking of women, and also their ability to face up to trouble when it comes, and it shouldn't be allowed to come on them unexpected. — Louis L'Amour

for what man does not love that which he himself has built? — 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

I think of myself ... as a troubadour, a village storyteller, the guy in the shadows of the campfire. — Louis L'Amour

That was the trouble with California in the 1840's. The life was too easy, there was no necessity for struggle, and men must struggle or they deteriorate. — Louis L'Amour

We sprung from thin soil, and raised more kin than crops, but we were proud folk... — Louis L'Amour

A writer's brain is like a magician's hat. If you're going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first — Louis L'Amour

To a wandering man in the wilderness a back trail must be as important as that ahead, for it might be the direction taken tomorrow, and when one faced around the trail looked far, far different. Gigantic boulders seen from one direction might be low, flat rocks seen from another ... all things were different. Studying trails had taught him much about life, that much depends on the viewpoint. — Louis L'Amour

I don't have anybody available to send up there to help you out. We're kind of up to our elbows in enemy sympathizers right now in Los Angeles. — Louis L'Amour

We will always have Reeses and Heseltines, and they will always seem big and brave to growing boys. They swagger and make loud noises in their own little circle, but they are only the coyotes that yap around the heels of the herd.
'Remember this, Shell, the coyotes aren't going anywhere, but the herd is, and so are the men who drive the herd. — Louis L'Amour

The call of the horizon finds quick response in the heart of every wanderer. — Louis L'Amour

A family is a place where a body can share the no-account things, can talk of the little matters important only to ourselves, where we can laugh and cry and tell of the day-by-day happenings and then forget them. — Louis L'Amour

Only the innocent speak of adventure, for adventure is only a romantic name for trouble ... — Louis L'Amour

We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become. — Louis L'Amour

The idea of love, while always in her mind, had never become quite real to her. — Louis L'Amour

KILKENNY STUDIED THE street outside. The bulk of the outlaws seemed to have holed up in the livery stable and they were putting up a hot fire. Others had taken positions behind a pile of stones beyond the street and still others in the bunkhouse. There was no way to estimate their numbers. Some — Louis L'Amour

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds. — Louis L'Amour

A quiet man I was, and not one to provoke a quarrel, but if set upon I would fight back. I do not say this in boasting, for it was as much a part of me as the beating of my heart. It was bred in the blood-line of those from whom I come, and I could not be other than I am. — Louis L'Amour

What we did not possess we had to make for ourselves or learn to do without, but the little I learned helped me to build a defense against the change that time would surely bring, to teach me that to live was to change, and that change was the one irrevocable law. Nothing remained the same. — Louis L'Amour

One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives. — Louis L'Amour

How much can a man endure? How long could a man continue? These things I asked myself, for I am a questioning man, yet even as I asked the answers were there before me. If he be a man indeed, he must always go on, he must always endure. Death is an end to torture, to struggle, to suffering, but it is also an end to warmth, light, the beauty of a running horse, the smell of damp leaves, of gunpowder, the walk of a woman when she knows someone watches ... these things, too, are gone. — Louis L'Amour

Where can a man get a bite to eat?" the cowhand asked. "There's several restaurants, but if you can do with beef an' eggs, just set down over yonder and we can fix you up. They're fixin' breakfast for the boss right now," the bartender added, "and I'll just have them put on something extry." When the bartender saw — Louis L'Amour

Nothing is quite so beautiful as when you share it with it with someone else. There is no purpose in working unless one works for someone, for something. — Louis L'Amour

We must read, not only for what we read but for what it makes us think. — Louis L'Amour

A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think. — 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

There will be blood," he said quietly, "blood and death. You should not have come."
"Since when was a woman afraid of blood?" she asked. "The problem is not only Sean's. It is mine also. If there is to be blood, I will share in the letting or the losing of it. — Louis L'Amour

A man in his life may have many teachers, some most unexpected. The question lies with the man himself: Will he learn from them? — Louis L'Amour

[Barnabas speaks] "I will drink water."
"Water? But water is not fit for men to drink. For the cattle, for birds and beast, but a man needs ale ... or wine, if you are a Frenchman." [William answers] — Louis L'Amour

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. — Louis L'Amour

If they didn't accept him, the hell with them - he could go his own way. — Louis L'Amour

A man who starts imagining that others think good because he does is simply out of his mind. I've helped bury a few who did think that way ... nice, peaceful men who wanted no trouble and made none.
When feeding time comes around there's nothing a hawk likes better than a nice, fat, peaceful dove. — Louis L'Amour

It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each trail better than he had found it. "Tread lightly on the paths," he had told me. "Others will come when you have gone."
That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two. — Louis L'Amour

All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I. — Louis L'Amour

At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen. — Louis L'Amour

Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king. — Louis L'Amour

What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough. — 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

The trouble with being on the wrong side of the law was the kind of company you had to keep. — Louis L'Amour

Caution always, but when a man acts he should act suddenly and with decision. — Louis L'Amour

Home is where we're going now, — Louis L'Amour

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder. — Louis L'Amour

He had no love for sleeping inside and wanted his horse near him. There was something about lying under the stars that was conducive to thought, and he had some thinking to do. — Louis L'Amour

Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years. — Louis L'Amour

The Dutchman [Brannenburg] was hard ... he was stone. His brain was eroded granite where the few ideas he had carved deep their ruts of opinion. There was no way for another idea to seep in, no place for imagination, no place for dreams, none for compassion or mercy or even fear.
He knew no shadings of emotion, he knew no half-rights or half-wrongs or pity or excuse, nor had he any sense of pardon. The more I thought of him the more I knew he was not evil in himself, and he would have been shocked that anybody thought of him as evil. Shocked for a moment only, then he'd have shut the idea from his mind as nonsense. For the deepest groove worn into that granite brain was the one of his own rightness.
And that scared me. — Louis L'Amour

Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him. — Louis L'Amour

Feud and one of the most feared men — Louis L'Amour

The mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all. — 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

I never figured it was a cowardly thing to be scared. It's to be scared and still face up to what scares you that matters. — Louis L'Amour

Like I say, I killed a man or two but I'm no thief. My ma raised me better. — Louis L'Amour

Today is all we have, tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality. — Louis L'Amour