Louis L'amour Quotes

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

~ Louis L'amour

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

~ 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

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.

~ Louis L'amour

It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man... and dead.

~ 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

The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.

~ Louis L'amour

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

~ Louis L'amour

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

~ 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

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

~ Louis L'amour

A journey is time suspended.

~ 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

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.

~ Louis L'amour

Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.

~ 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

Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area to what was happening elsewhere, and what had happened in the past. To view a period in isolation is to miss whatever message it has to offer.

~ Louis L'amour

Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it. I say this, who am Mathurin Kerbouchard, a homeless wanderer upon the earth's far roads. I speak as one who has known hunger and feast, poverty and riches, the glory of the sword and the humility of the defenseless. Hunger inspires no talent, and carried too far, it deadens the faculties and destroys initiative...

~ Louis L'amour

It means little to anybody but us. We set store by kinfolk. We've our troubles from time to time, but when one of us is in danger, there'll be help from any who are around.

~ Louis L'amour

Personally, I do not believe the human mind has any limits but those we impose ourselves.

~ Louis L'amour

Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.

~ Louis L'amour

Many a small man is considered good while he remains small, but let power come to him, and he becomes a raging fury.

~ Louis L'amour

Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others.

~ Louis L'amour

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

~ 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

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

...he'd had the foresight to know that a lot of the savages wear store-bought clothes.

~ Louis L'amour

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

~ Louis L'amour

The wealthy and satisfied do not migrate, they stagnate.

~ Louis L'amour

It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask: Where am I going? What am I becoming? What do I wish to do and become?Most people whom I encountered were without purpose, people who had given themselves no goal. The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination.

~ Louis L'amour

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

~ Louis L'amour

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

~ Louis L'amour

Now, tomorrow Miss Laurie McCrae and me, we have an appointment with a sky pilot who will make it proper for us to travel in double harness.

~ Louis L'amour

Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning.

~ Louis L'amour

...if we are to become a land of homes and people, evil men must not be allowed to persist in their evil.

~ 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

...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

I've noticed...that whenever a man is asked to be realistic he is being asked to betray something in which he believes. It is the favorite argument of those who believe that only the end matters, not the means.

~ Louis L'amour

Folks can’t seem to realize that it isn’t a smooth talker we need in there but a steady man, a man with judgement. Any medicine-show man can spout words, if they are written for him. It takes no genius to sound well. To act right and at the right time is something else again.

~ Louis L'amour

Indeed, I find that distance lends perspective and I often write better of a place when I am some distance from it. One can be so overwhelmed by the forest as to miss seeing the trees.

~ Louis L'amour