Quotes from Louis L'Amour

Such are the amenities of social life, which oft makes a liar of the best of men.

Give the brain encouragement from study, from thinking, from visualizing and no drugs are needed.

Neely grumbled. 'They [Indians] are a murdering lot of savages, and no mention of them in the Bible.' 'What has that to do with it?' John Sampson asked. 'If there's no mention of them,' Neely said, 'they are animals, not men.' 'I don't recall any mention of the English, either,' I said mildly. He gave me a mean look, then changed the subject.

Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one.

Aye, but a hand properly used can be as dangerous as a knife . . . And a man is not lynched for what he does with his hands.

he who ceases to learn is already a half-dead man.

Well, I've often been wrong, but this time I was right and they had to pay mind to me or bury me, and mine is a breed that dies hard.

Need and desire have no connection,' I said. 'Many people desire things they do not need. Happiness can be measured by what one does not need, but often to see is to want.

For it is given that no man can do it all, that each must carry the future forward a few years and then pass the message on to him who follows.

A name is what a man makes it," I

We mountain boys were all walkers. Mostly it was the fastest way to get ary place back in the hills, for often a boy could cross a mountain afoot where no horse could go . . .

A quiet man I was, and not one to provoke a quarrel, but if set upon I would fight back. I do not say this in boasting, for it was as much a part of me as the beating of my heart. It was bred in the blood-line of those from whom I come, and I could not be other than I am.

My folks built blood into the foundations of this country and I don't aim to see them torn down for no reason whatsoever.

I've written all these stories without any pornography, without any obscenity. I grew up among sailors and miners and lumberjacks and the roughest kind men in the world, but I never found it necessary to use all that in the stories. I can make them real without that. I think much of that kind of writing is a coverup for lack of real skill.

be wary of evidence given by others, 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.

The cause of right is never lost, Leal. I've often thought the biggest damned fool in the world could to down in history as a great man if he would just consistently vote for the greatest good of the greatest number - Kilkenny

No man can put a rope on the past and hope to snub it down. The best thing is to learn to it ride the new trails - Kilkenny

It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask: Where am I going? What am I becoming? What do I wish to do and become? Most people whom I encountered were without purpose, people who had given themselves no goal. The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination.

She did not believe me. You do not worship the Sun. The sun gives life to all things. Without the sun this would be a dark, dead world. Perhaps, I added, the spirit we worship is the same, and only the names are different. The message from He who rules over us all may come to each people in a different way.

The buzzard could not reason but he knew the patterns that led to food. His entire life was built upon such fragments of knowledge and he knew that where such groups of men rode, death rode with them.

Since I was a small boy, I had watched that forest for enemies or for game, and I knew its every mood and shading, how the sunlight fell through the leaves and where the shadows gathered. It held no mysteries for me but much of memory. I had played there as a child with Yance, Jubal, and Brian, later with Noelle. We had climbed its trees, picked berries there, and played hide-and-seek under its branches.

There was something her father had said. "We do not own the land, Angie. We hold it in trust for tomorrow. We take our living from it, but we must leave it rich for your son and for his sons and for all of those who shall follow.

The more ill-prepared people are to face trouble, the more likely they are to revert to savagery against each other.

Ma'am, I said, I'd have liked it, having you for a ma.