Quotes from Louis L'Amour

when a man lives out his life under the sun and the stars, half the time riding alone over mountains and desert, then he usually has a religion although it may not be the usual variety.

I like my fellow man, but I also realize he carried a good measure of the Old Nick in him and he can find a good excuse for almost any kind of wrongdoing or mischief.

This was a big country needing big men and women to live in it, and there was no place out here for the frightened or the mean.

it is better to eat when one can, for one never knows when he will eat again.

If they didn't accept him, the hell with them - he could go his own way.

A man who starts imagining that others think good because he does is simply out of his mind. I've helped bury a few who did think that way... nice, peaceful men who wanted no trouble and made none. When feeding time comes around there's nothing a hawk likes better than a nice, fat, peaceful dove.

There are folks who can't abide camp-robber jays, but I take to them. Often enough they've been my only company for days at a time, and they surely do get friendly. They'll steal your grub right from under your nose, but who I am to criticize the lifestyle of a bird? He has his ways, I have mine. Like I say, I take to them.

Home is where we're going now

people have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gambling, thieving, and robbing are covered over, folks will tolerate it longer than outright violence, even when the violence may be cleansing.

I would not have the old ways die, for all people in their own way find a path to wisdom. Each way can be a good way. Each has something to offer the world.

If at any time your Prince should pretend your position with him is sure, begin from that moment to feel unsure.

It is neither size nor age that makes a man, Mr. Ryerson, but something he has inside. My son has it.

She'd never been one to think in terms of years, anyway. A person was what they were, and many a man at forty was sixty in his ways and many another was twenty and would never grow past it.

He was the only man she had ever known who made her feel protected. He made her feel safe, secure. And the feeling was strange to her.

The trees are aware, and the bushes. The birds and small animals are aware, and they listen, hesitant, suspecting. Awareness of danger is an element of their being. It is like their breathing, like the blood in their veins, and one who lives much with the wilderness become so aware, too... Half of woodcraft is attention, and all of survival.

Life, he decided, was never a question of accumulating material things, nor in the struggle for reputation, but in the widening and deepening of perception, increasing the sensitivity of the faculties, of an awareness of the world in which one lives.

From Elisha Comes to Red Horse : Now I can't claim to be what you'd call a religious man, yet I've a respect for religion, and when a man lives out his life under the sun and the stars, half the time riding alone over mountains and desert, then he usually has a religion although it may not be the usual variety.

I have education and once I had position. Now I am nobody, but I am happy.

It didn't seem fair, but then, a lot of things aren't. We take them as they come.

Raindrops felt his cheeks with blind, questing fingers...the black trunks of the trees were like iron bars against the gray of gathering pools. Radigan

Laws are made to free people, not to bind them

The things a man will wish for are harder to leave behind than all his wants...

Es wird eine Zeit kommen, in der man glaubt, dass alles zu Ende ist. Das wird der Anfang sein.

we hold this land only for a time. Whether we win it in peace or war, we hold it only in trust for other peoples, and other generations.