Up to a point a personโs 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.
Louis L'AmourIt 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'AmourThe wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me, and nothing before me but hope.
Louis L'AmourWhat 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.
Louis L'AmourIn 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.
Louis L'Amour