Quotes from Louis L'Amour

This Indian wife you have... - Had. She's dead. - I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up an unhappy memory. - I can't remember anything unhappy about Destarte.

It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man... and dead.

Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.

Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every one known to the others.

the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a crime. If a man is going to vote, if he's going to take part in his country and its government, then it's up to him to understand.

I came into the world with two priceless advantages: good health and a love of learning. When I left school at the age of fifteen I was halfway through the tenth grade. I left for two reasons, economic necessity being the first of them. More important was that school was interfering with my education.

Someone has said that culture is what remains with you after you have forgotten all you have read, and I believe there is much truth in that.

Nobody should ever try to second-guess history; the facts are fantastic enough.

He is a fool who will descend into a well on another man's rope.

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

Laws are made to free people, not to bind them - if they are the proper laws. They tell each of us what he may do without transgressing on the equal liberty of any other man.

difference between a child and an adult is not years, rather it's a willingness to accept responsibility, to be responsible for one's own actions.

There will always be folks who will talk, and the better you do in the world the more bad things they will say of you. Back there in the settlement you remember how the dogs used to run out and bark at our wagons? Yes, ma. Did the wagons stop? No, ma. Remember that, son. The dogs bark, but the wagons go on their way, and if you're going some place you haven't time to bother with barking dogs.

if we are to become a land of homes and people, evil men must not be allowed to persist in their evil.

Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

To be a man was to be responsible. It was as simple as that. To be a man was to build something, to try to make the world about him a bit easier to live in for himself and those who followed. You could sneer at that, you could scoff, you could refuse to acknowledge it, but when it came right down to it, Conn decided it was the man who planted a tree, dug a well, or graded a road who mattered.

A knife is sharpened on stone, steel is tempered by fire, but men must be sharpened by men.

It is this by which we measure a man, by what he does with his life, by what he creates to leave behind. —Louis L'Amour

Victory is not won in miles but in inches.

This here's a hard country. If a man ain't fit, he can't last - Kilkenny

sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Each day must be approached as a unit; each day must be lived with care; and if this was done, the procession of days would turn out all right.

Ours was a family in which everybody was constantly reading, and where literature, politics, history, and the events of the prize ring were discussed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Yol Bolsun (May there be a road) [Louis L'Amour}

How many time have I talked with people who have ridden the trails where I have ridden, yet had seen nothing? They passed over the land just to get over it, not to live with it and see it, feel it. There was beauty out there...