Quotes from Louis L'Amour

Every morning is a beginning, a fresh start, and a man needn't be hog-tied to the past. Whatever went before, a man's life can begin now, today.

A family is a place where a body can share the no-account things, can talk of the little matters important only to ourselves, where we can laugh and cry and tell of the day-by-day happenings and then forget them.

There was a curious affinity between man and dog. Both were untamed, both were creatures born and bred to fight, honed and tempered fine by hot winds and long desert stretches, untrusting, dangerous, yet good companions in a hard land.

To survive? What is that? A mouse lives, a fly lives; one flees in terror, another lives in filth. They exist, they are, but do they live?

Can you see the future, Kerbouchard? Who would wish to? Our lives hold a veil between anticipation and horror. Anticipation is the carrot suspended before the jackass to keep him moving forward. Horror is what he would see if he took his eyes off the carrot.

You are an educated man, Old One.' 'What is education besides a conditioning of the mind to a society and a way of life? There are many kinds of education, and often education closes as many doors as it opens for to believe implies disbelief. One accepts one kind of belief but closes the mind to all that is, or seems to be contradictory.

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

Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it. I say this, who am Mathurin Kerbouchard, a homeless wanderer upon the earth's far roads. I speak as one who has known hunger and feast, poverty and riches, the glory of the sword and the humility of the defenseless. Hunger inspires no talent, and carried too far, it deadens the faculties and destroys initiative...

Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning.

Nobody is ever convinced by argument, anyway. They just think up new reasons for maintaining old positions and become more defensive.

Nothing is quite so beautiful as when you share it with it with someone else. There is no purpose in working unless one works for someone, for something.

Most men never discover what they've got inside. A man has to face up to trouble before he knows.

Avoid conflict and trouble, for enough of it fetches to a man without his asking.

Nobody lives long low-rating an enemy. You've got to give the other fellow credit for having as much savvy as you have, and maybe a little more.

Hardy had learned in a hard school, where the tests are given by savage Indians, by bitter cold, by hunger. These were tests where the result was not just a bad mark if one failed. The result was a starved or frozen body somewhere, forgotten in the wilderness.

Now, tomorrow Miss Laurie McCrae and me, we have an appointment with a sky pilot who will make it proper for us to travel in double harness.

No one can "get" an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process. If it does nothing else, it should provide students with the tools for learning, acquaint them with methods of study and research, methods of pursuing an idea. We can only hope they come upon an idea they wish to pursue.

We must not lose touch with what we were, with what we had been, nor must we allow the well of our history to dry up, for a child without tradition is a child crippled before the world. Tradition can also be an anchor of stability and a shield to guard one from irresponsibility and hasty decision.

The wealthy and satisfied do not migrate, they stagnate.

Another thing Pa taught me: If you're going to fight Ã¢â'¬Â¦ fight. Talk about it after.

There's a saying that when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns.

Folks can't seem to realize that it isn't a smooth talker we need in there but a steady man, a man with judgement. Any medicine-show man can spout words, if they are written for him. It takes no genius to sound well. To act right and at the right time is something else again.

I was by no means a scholar, simply an interested reader with nothing to do but live and learn.

And then there's the gun itself. No man in his right mind will play with a gun. I've seen show-offs doing fancy spins and all that. No real gun-fighter ever did. With a hair-trigger, he'd be likely to blow a hole in his belly. The gun-fighter knows enough of guns to be wary of them. He treats them with respect. A pistol was never made for anything except killing, and a gunfighter never draws a gun unless to shoot, and he shoots to kill.