Quotes from Louis L'Amour

He never knew when he was whipped ... so he never was.

One thing we learned. To make a start and keep plugging. When I had fights at school, the little while I went, I just bowed my neck and kept swinging until something hit the dirt. Sometimes it was me, but I always got up.

A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is.

My future is one I must make myself.

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. ... Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.

I would not sit waiting for some value tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime. ... I would make something happen.

Pa, he always said a man had to look spry for himself, because nobody would do it for him; your opportunities didn't come knocking around, you had to hunt them down and hog-tie them.

I have been nothing ... but there is tomorrow.

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. He who is truly wise will never permit such moments to escape.

There have always been hard times. There have always been wars and troubles

A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?" "Tell me." "Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say.

When I die, remember that what you knew of me is with you always. What is buried is only the shell of what was. Do not regret the shell, but remember the man. Remember the father.

There are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices.

There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.

The thieves and killers are goin' to have guns, so if the honest men don't have 'em they just make it easier for the vicious.

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'.

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.

Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.

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.

No man ever raised a monument to a cynic or wrote a poem about a man without faith.

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.

Living a life is much like climbing mountains-the summits are always further off than you think, but when a man has a goal, he always feels he's working toward something.