Louis L'Amour Quotes
A good beginning makes a good end.
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
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.
Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.
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.
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.
The sunset was spectacular. The sky streaked itself with rose and the region of the sun became an indescribable glory. All my life I have used words, and yet I find times when they are totally inadequate.
No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.
Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.
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.
Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.
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.
He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.
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.
No one can get an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.
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.
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.
All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I.
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.
Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.
A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.
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.
The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast,
and you miss all you are traveling for.
Being scared can keep a man from getting killed, and often makes a better fighter of him.
The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance.
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.
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning.
A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.
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.
