Louis L'Amour Quotes

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.

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.

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.

One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend.

Dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition.

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

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

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

It is better to fear a little. One is cautious then.

He who plants a tree is a servant of God.

... the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.

Knowledge was meant to be shared.

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

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

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.

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'.

You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

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

. . . 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.

Revenge could steal a man's life until there was nothing left but emptiness.

How long is a girl a child? She is a child, and then one morning you wake up she's a woman, and a dozen different people of whom you recognize none.

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.

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

One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!

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.

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.

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

I never figured it was a cowardly thing to be scared. It's to be scared and still face up to what scares you that matters.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Today you can buy the Dialogues of Plato for less than you would spend on a fifth of whiskey, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the price of a cheap shirt. You can buy a fair beginning of an education in any bookstore with a good stock of paperback books for less than you would spend on a week's supply of gasoline.

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.

What 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.

Trail dust is thicker'n blood.

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

Victory is not won in miles but in inches.

A book is valuable not only for what it says but for what it makes you think, or causes you to remember. No matter what you wish to do or become there are books to teach you, help you, guide you.