Louis L'Amour Quotes

You can't fight the desert... you have to ride with it.

When I die, remember that what you knew of me is with you always. What is buried is only the shell of what was. Do not regret the shell, but remember the man. Remember the father.

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.

Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.

There are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices.

The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast, and you miss all you are traveling for.

Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance.

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.

Long ago I learned nothing gets done by just wishing it. You have to do it.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.

My future is one I must make myself.

The saddle is a place for dreaming when there's hours of trail ahead.

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

One never realizes how much and how little he knows until he starts talking.

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

There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.

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.

One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.

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.

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.

I am somebody. I am me. And I don't need anybody to make me somebody.

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

Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.

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.

To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that is how much of a hole you leave when you're gone.

Our libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth.

The thieves and killers are goin' to have guns, so if the honest men don't have 'em they just make it easier for the vicious.

Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle.

Some say opportunity knocks only once, that is not true. Opportunity knocks all the time, but you have to be ready for it. If the chance comes, you must have the equipment to take advantage of it.

To die is nothing. One is here, one is no longer here. It is only at the end one must be able to say 'I was a man'.

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.

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

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.

A ship does not sail with yesterday's wind.

Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it.

Mountains should not be judged by altitude.

A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.

... we must read, not only for what we read but for what it makes us think.

A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.

When corruption is visited upon the cities of men, the mountains and the deserts await him. The cities are for money but the high-up hills are purely for the soul.

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.

The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.

He never knew when he was whipped ... so he never was.

Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.

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.

When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.

I fear there will be no future for those who do not change.