Louis l'amour quotes

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.

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.

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

There is no miraculous change that takes place in a boy that makes him a man. He becomes a man by being a man.

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

Books are the perfect Time Machine. By the simple act of opening a book you can, in an instant, be travelling up a jungle river without once being bitten by mosquitoes, or you can almost die of thirst in the desert while holding a cold drink in your hand, or dine in the finest restaurants and never have to worry about paying the bill, or ride the wild country of our western frontier and never worry about losing your scalp to a raiding party.

Folks who talk about no violence are always the ones who are first to call a policeman and usually they are sure there is one handy.

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.

No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.

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.

I'm like a big old hen. I can't cluck too long about the egg I've just laid because I've got 5 more inside me pushing to get out.

There have always been hard times. There have always been wars and troubles -famine, disease and such-like -and some folks are born with money, some with none. In the end it is up to the man what he becomes, and none of those other things matters. It is character that counts.

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.

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

The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever.

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'.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Have faith in God but keep your powder dry.

To a fool time brings only age not wisdom.

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.

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

A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.

Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit.

A man shares his days with hunger, thirst, and cold, with the good times and the bad, and the first part of being a man is to understand that.

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

I don't believe you know anything about a man like me or a country like this. It takes rough men, Miss Fair, to tame a rough country; rough men, but good men. Your father is in that class. As for you, I don't think you'd measure up, and you'll do well to leave it. You're a hothouse flower, very soft, very appealing and very useless...In the world you are going to, men want pretty useless women. They want toys for their lighte moments, and we have those women out here, too, only we have another name for them. We want women who can make a home, and if need be, handle a rifle.

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.

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

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

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

To exist is to adapt, and if one could not adapt, one died and made room for those who could.

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

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.

It is not enough to do, one must also become. I wish to be wiser, stronger, better. This--" I held out my hands "--this thing that is me is incomplete. It is only the raw material with which I have to work. I want to make it better than I received 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.

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.

When feeding time comes around, there is nothing a hawk likes better than a nice, fat, peaceful dove.

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

Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions that faded with years until only a blur remained, and different memories would remember the past in different ways. A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions that faded with years until only a blur remained, and different memories would remember the past in different ways. A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.

A man who says he has never been scared is either lying or else he's never been any place or done anything.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns.

Victory is not won in miles but in inches.

There's no stopping a man who knows he's in the right and keeps a-coming.

If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

Strange how it was always the spoiled who weakened and cried first, and it was the injured, the maimed, the blind, and the poor who fought on alone.

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

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

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

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.

Any man can shoot a gun, and with practice he can draw fast and shoot accurately, but that makes no difference. What counts is how you stand up when somebody is shooting back at you.

In the United States we have concentrated tremendous sums of money on the educational plant, seemingly with the idea that the right number of buildings will turn out the right number of graduates. Yet the teachers who actually instruct the future citizens of our country are more often than not miserably paid. If in the future we find ourselves with a lot of fourth-rate citizens, we have only ourselves to blame.

No man ever raised a monument to a cynic or wrote a poem about a man without faith.

I think of myself in the oral tradition-as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered- as a storyteller. A good storyteller.

We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.

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

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

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.

Carryin' a gun is a chancy thing. Sooner or later a man is put in a position to use it. And a body has to figure that if somebody packs iron he plans to use it when the time comes; and if he draws it out, he plans to shoot.

I do not like violence, but ours is a violent time, and there are some men who understand nothing else.

It is better to have no emotion when it is work. Do what needs to be done, and do it coolly.

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

A man can lose sight of everything else when he's bent on revenge, and it ain't worth it.

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.

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

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.

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.

The only power source a book needs is you. If you have to leave for a few minutes you have not lost the story. It is waiting for you when you return. You can pick up a book and resume reading at any time, after a few minutes, a few days, even a few years. A television picture or a movie might be lost forever, but your book is waiting.

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.

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

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

The deep sea can be fathomed, but who knows the heart of a woman?

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

My future is one I must make myself.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

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.

The one law that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.

Books are the building blocks of civilization, for without the written word, a man knows nothing beyond what occurs during his own brief years and, perhaps, in a few tales his parents tell him.

. . . 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.

Power not only corrupts he who wields the power but those who submit to it. Those who grovel at the feet of power betray their fellows to hide themselves behind the cloak of submission. It is an evil thing.

Luck comes to a man who puts himself in the way of it. You went where something might be found and you found something, simple as that.

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

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

A ship does not sail with yesterday's wind.

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.

Do you wish to learn? There are books that can teach you anything, and there is no cheaper form of education, nor one whose effects are more lasting. My education came from books, and they have been my companions by many campfires, in bunkhouses, ships' forecastles, in hotels and on planes. No matter where you find me, I am never far from a book.

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.

No matter how much I admire our schools, I know that no university exists that can provide an education; what a university can provide is an outline, to give the learner a direction and guidance. The rest one has to do for oneself.

When I was a small boy I often went to the woods to lie on the grass in the shade. Somehow I had come to believe the earth could give me wisdom, but it did not. Yet I learned a little about animals and learned it is not always brave to make a stand. It is often foolish. There is a time for courage and a time for flight.

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

This-this was what made life: a moment of quiet, the water falling in the fountain, the girl's voice. . . a moment of captured beauty. Those who are truly wise will never permit such moments to escape.

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.

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

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

Mountains should not be judged by altitude.

I have been nothing, but there is tomorrow.

If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.

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

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.

Trail dust is thicker'n blood.

Trade is much superior to piracy. You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again.

Living a life is much like climbing mountains-the summits are always further off than you think, but when a man has a goal, he always feels he's working toward something.

What is education but a conditioning of the mind to a society and a way of life.

Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic.

The fact of the matter is that poor men do not often steal, and when they do, it is petty theft, something to eat or perhaps an item of clothing to keep them from the cold. Thieves are usually those who have something and want more.

When at the typewriter I am no longer where I site but am away across the mountains, in ancient cities or on the Great Plains among the buffalo. Often I think of what pitiful fools are those who use mind-altering drugs to seek feelings they do not have, each drug taking a little more from what they have of mind, leaving them a little less. Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing, and no drugs are needed.

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

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.

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

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.

He who plants a tree is a servant of God.

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