Louis L'Amour Quotes

123 Sourced Quotes

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

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour
Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance.

Louis L'Amour
Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves.

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

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

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour
Dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition.

Louis L'Amour
Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

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

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour
Enemies can be an incentive to survive and become someone in spite of them. Enemies can keep you alert and aware.

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

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

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

Louis L'Amour
I'm like a big old hen. I can't cluck too much about the egg I've just laid because five more are pushing to come out.

Louis L'Amour
The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.

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

Louis L'Amour
The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me, and nothing before me but hope.

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour
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.

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

Louis L'Amour
A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.

Louis L'Amour
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.

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

Louis L'Amour
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.

Louis L'Amour