Louis L'Amour > Quotes

“The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast,
and you miss all you are traveling for.”
― Louis L'Amour

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning. ”
― Louis L'Amour

“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.”
― 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, Sacketts Land

“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― 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, Education of a Wandering Man

“A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”
― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man

“The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance.”
― Louis L'Amour

“One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!”
― Louis L'Amour

“No one can "get" an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Have faith in God but keep your powder dry.”
― Louis L'Amour

“When you go to a country, you must learn how to say two things: how to ask for food, and to tell a woman that you love her. Of these the second is more important, for if you tell a woman you love her, she will certainly feed you.”
― Louis L'Amour

“I am somebody. I am me. And I don't need anybody to make me somebody.”
― Louis L'Amour

“Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like, or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.”
― Louis L'Amour, Ride the River

“Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.”
― Louis L'Amour

“. . . What do you wish to be? What would you like to become?”

I did not know, and I told her so, but the question worried me. Should I know?

“There is time,” she said, “but the sooner you know, the sooner you can plan. To have a goal is the important thing, and to work toward it. Then, if you decide you wish to do something different, you will at least have been moving, you will have been going somewhere, you will have been learning.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Lonesome Gods

“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.”
― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man

“Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.”
― Louis L'Amour

“The only thing that never changes is that everything changes.”
― 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

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”
― Louis L'Amour, Matagorda/The First Fast Draw

“Today is all we have, tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.”
― 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

“A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from pretty elegant furnishings.”
― Louis L'Amour

“The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Proving Trail

“Reading without thinking is nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

“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, The Walking Drum

“I wonder why it is the man who pleads for mercy never gives it.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Quick and the Dead

“To a fool time brings only age not wisdom.”
― Louis L'Amour

“A little rest and meditation often saves a lot of riding over rough country.”
― Louis L'Amour

“There is nothing more dangerous than a woman with a shotgun. Because you don't know when it's going to go off...and neither does she.”
― Louis L'Amour

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

“When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Lonesome Gods

“Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Haunted Mesa

“He never knew when he was whipped ... So he never was.......”
― Louis L'Amour, To the Far Blue Mountains

“A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do”
― Louis L'Amour

“It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”
― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man

“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, Hondo

“If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Man Called Noon

“Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen”
― 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

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.That will be the beginning.”
― Louis L'Amour

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

“You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that is how much of a whole you leave when you're gone.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Daybreakers

“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, The Lonesome Gods

“After a few days, I mused, I would have no trouble. Whoever heard of a revolution of fat men?”
― Louis L'Amour, To the Far Blue Mountains

“Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long.”
― Louis L'Amour

“A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realists, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very old or very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads.”
― Louis L'Amour

“There are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond.”
― Louis L'Amour, The Haunted Mesa