Louis L'Amour Quotes

... 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.

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.

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

A good beginning makes a good end.

Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves.

To pursue a man effectively, it is best to begin with his thinking.

If you want to be creative, go where your questions lead you.

What people speak of as adventure is something nobody in his right mind would seek out, and it becomes romantic only when one is safely at home.

I do not believe writers should read reviews of their own books, and I do not. If one is not careful one is soon writing to please reviewers and not their audience or themselves.

The dancer becomes the dance. And I am the writing.

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

Books are the building blocks of civilization and a people without books are a people without history, a people with no story older than the tales of the oldest man or woman.

It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails.

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.

Out here you better have a gun, and a gun in the wagon ain't good for nothin'. I believe what the old Quaker said, 'Trust in the Lord, but keep your powder dry.

Knowledge was meant to be shared.

But even the law cannot be in your bedroom at night.

A journey is time suspended.

I wonder why it is the man who pleads for mercy never gives it.

when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns.

After a few days, I mused, I would have no trouble. Whoever heard of a revolution of fat men?

Throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps the loudest is usually the one that got hit.

My lady had the body of a siren, the face of a goddess, and the mind of an Armenian camel dealer.

Man needs so little... yet he begins wanting so much.

Adventure is nothing but a romantic name for trouble.

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.

If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.

A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is.

Hate would destroy him who hated.

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

I have told many, yet when I go down that last trail, I know there will be a thousand stories hammering at my skull, demanding to be told.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived.

A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.

Being scared can keep a man from getting killed, and often makes a better fighter out of him.

Caution always, but when a man acts he should act suddenly and with decision.

A book is valuable not only for what it says but for what it makes you think, or causes you to remember. No matter what you wish to do or become there are books to teach you, help you, guide you.

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do

...Proximity to a noose danger and death ... can make man or woman appreciate things.

For a man with an education the world is a wide place and the opportunities are many

Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.

Much of command is the ability to take command.

What is today accepted as truth will tomorrow prove to be only amusing.

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.

There have always been hard times. There have always been wars and troubles

The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance.

A television picture or a movie might be lost forever, but your book is waiting.

At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.

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

One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend.