Quotes from Louis L'Amour

in the world were two kinds of people, those who wish and those who will, and the world and its goods will always belong to those who will.

I think that no two men age at the same rate, or learn equal sums from experience. Some

Men do not like puzzles, Barnabas. They prefer categories. It is far easier to slip a piece of information into a known slot than to puzzle over the unknown.

you," Wildy said

In his pocket was a letter with directions from the only man he knew would give someone like him a chance.  His former captain in the cavalry knewhow hard and how well he could work. 

Seems to me we work out our destinies subject to a lot of accident, incident, and whim.

She looked matters in the face and did something about them, and my mother had been such a woman, and Lila even more so.

for in all evidence there is some interpretation. The eyes see, the mind explains. But does the mind explain correctly? The mind only has what experience and education have given it, and perhaps that is not enough. Because one has seen does not mean one knows.

Was it some impulse buried deep within me? Was there in my blood and bones some selective device that chose me and a few others like me to venture? To go on? To penetrate the strange and the new? Were we something chosen by nature for this purpose? Had we control over our actions, or were we mere tools of the way of things that must ceaselessly go forward?

Yet, might it not be that he secretly loved him? That all this was a mask, a thing to shield him from such an emotion? For few of the Indians we had met thus far regarded the father with veneration, for the maternal uncle was he who drew the respect we gave to a father.

You can marry me now and resent at leisure.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.

Adventure is nothing but a romantic name for trouble.

A good beginning makes a good end.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

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.

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.

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