favorite Louis L'Amour Quotes

01 Sep, 2024

LIFE
"To challenge the fates, that is living! To ride the storm, to live daringly, to live nobly, not wasting one's life in foolish, silly risks, or ruining the brain with too much wine, or with hashish!" (The Walking Drum)
"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." (The Lonely Men)
"What is it that has made me happy... A deck beneath my feet, a horse between my knees, a sword in my hand, or a girl in my arms! These I have loved, and the horizon yonder, beyond which there is the unknown." (The Walking Drum)
"One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like or doing things when one would be better off some- where else." (Ride the River)
"All life is based on decisions. Decide now on what you'd like to become and what you would like to do. The two are not necessarily the same, although sometimes they can be." (The Lonesome Gods)
"No man is lost while yet he lives." (The Walking Drum)
"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." (The Walking Drum)
"Pa, he always taught us boys to make up our minds, and once made up, to act on what we decided, and not waste time quibbling." (Mojave Crossing)
OPPORTUNITY
"He put his hand upon my shoulder and told me that 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." (The Warrior's Path)
"I had found no luck and no opportunity except that I made." (Sackett's Land)
"...any man can be a slave, and a few men, if they will it, can become kings." (The Warrior's Path)
"I want him to understand what is happening here, then go on to something bigger, better. Happiness for a man usually means doing something he wants to do very much, something that gives him a sense of achievement." (Bendigo Shafter)
"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." (Chancy)
HARD WORK
"A man should build. He should always build." (Sackett's Land)
"... [I] looked up in darkness at the hand-hewn rafters. A knowing hand had shaped them, a knowing hammer drove the pegs. There is a quiet beauty in such things as these, a beauty more than paint or chisel make, the beauty of quiet men, making strong things for their own use, shaping each piece with loving fingers." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
"What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough." (Bendigo Shafter)
"Own a few acres, lad, and keep it unencumbered and you'll not want for some'at to eat. You can always grow a few cabbages." (Sacket's Land)
"...there's work a man can do that's helpful to his thinking, and working with the hands is one way." (Bendigo Shafter)
"The world isn't built around people who do what they want to do... what they want regardless of who gets hurt. It is built by people who do what they should do." (Bendigo Shafter)
"Our struggle was for time. Our leisure was bought from hardship, and we needed leisure to think, to dream, to create." (Bendigo Shafter)
"My friend, there is a Hell. It's when a man has a family to support, has his health, and is ready to work, and there is no work to do. When he stands with empty hands and sees his children going hungry, his wife without the things to do with. I hope you never have to try it." (Bendigo Shafter)
"...it is the work a man does that matters. Many men who have made mistakes in their own lives have created grandly, beautifully. It is this by which we measure a man, by what he does in this life, by what he creates to leave behind." (Bendigo Shafter)
FAMILY AND HOME
"A name is what a man makes it... My father did well with his and I hope to do as much. The times are changing, and many people are restless with the desire to better themselves. We have too many gentlemen who do nothing, are nothing..." (Sackett's Land)
"One chooses a name if one wills, perhaps one more suited to the personality. After all, only a few inherit great names. The rest must make them for ourselves..." (The Warrior's Path)
"A man's name is his own." (The Walking Drum)
"...I learned a long time ago that a name is only what a person makes it." (Lonely on the Mountain)
"...some of the great families of the world were founded with nothing but a sword and a strong right arm." (Sackett's Land)
"That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two." (Jubal Sackett)
"A wife and family don't go along with dreams. They hamper a man's movements, they restrict the risks he can afford to take to get ahead, and even the most helpful of women is usually more expense than a very young man can bear." (Bendigo Shafter)
"It is a danger... to live always in one city, for undue emphasis is placed upon the importance of those who live there. Often when compared to others, their shadows grow less." (The Walking Drum)
"It seems to me that first a man tries to get shelter and food to eat, but as soon as he has that he tries to find beauty, something to warm the heart and the mind, something to ease the thoughts and make pleasurable the sitting in the evening." (Galloway)
WOMEN
"...it runs in the blood of a man that he should care for womenfolk. It's a need in him, deep as motherhood to a woman, and it's a thing folks are likely to forget... If he's to feel of any purpose to himself, he's got to feel he's needed, feel he stands between somebody and any trouble." (The Sky-Liners)
"I always said... that I wanted a woman to walk beside me, not behind me." (Sackett's Land)
"Anyway, womenfolks have to find a man with roots, a man who belongs somewhere or to something. She's got to tak into account she may have a child and she's got to have a roof over her head and a place to raise him. A woman's generally lookin' for a man with cattle on the hills or goods on the shelf, and well she should be." (Passin' Through)
"You assume such a girl would have less courage than you? Less fortitude? You do not understand my sex, Barnabas." (Sackett's Land)
"A man who has not known many women cannot appreciate the value of one." (The Walking Drum)
"When one is young, one does not think of gold but only of the light in a maiden's eyes." (The Walking Drum)
"...she is not to dream about, my friend, she is the dream." (Sackett's Land)
"My shadow is small before the sun of your beauty." (The Walking Drum)
"But she was a woman, with a woman's love to give, and she needed someone reaching out for it. There was an emptiness within her, a yearning that must be fulfilled, a love that needed to be given." (Conagher)
"You've got to admit she's pretty much of a woman, and she was always the lady. But you've got to admit she keeps what she's got so you know it's there." (Mojave Crossing)
"Women? Ah, women were the stuff of dreams, made to be loved, and he who could say the reality was less than the promise was neither lover nor dreamer." (The Walking Drum)
"The deep sea can be fathomed, but who knows the heart of a woman?" (The Walking Drum)
"Women are neither weaklings nor fools, and they, too, must plan for what is to come. He who does not prepare his woman for disaster is a fool." (The Walking Drum)
LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, AND LOYALTY
"Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to fragments, or love can be a thing that endures, a rich deep current that flows unending down the years." (The Walking Drum)
"Who is to say? What is Love? Perhaps for a time I loved her; perhaps in a way I love her still. Perhaps when a man has held a woman in his arms, there is a little of her with him forever." (The Walking Drum)
"I do not even know what love is. I only know that I felt good when near him, lost when he went from me." (Last of the Breed)
"A man's success he can share with others, his troubles are his own." (Comstock Lode)
TIME
"For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality." (The Walking Drum)
"Few of us ever live in the present, we are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone..." (Bendigo Shafter)
"Men always had reason to measure time, for ceremonies and the like, but sometimes I think we'd all be better off if we had no clocks or calendars. Then we might never get old, for we wouldn't know the passing of time." (Bendigo Shafter)
GROWTH AND CHANGE
"I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen." (Sackett's Land)
"A ship does not sail with yesterday's wind..." (The Walking Drum)
CIVILIZATION AND BELIEFS
"It is a thing I must remember, that men must always remember, that civilization is a flimsy cloak, and just outside are hunger, thirst, and cold ...waiting." (Bendigo Shafter)
"...it is not streets and buildings that make a town, but men and women." (Bendigo Shafter)
"A man may not have much, but he sets store by his pride as a free-born American citizen, and is ready to fight for what he believes, you choose the time and place." (Chancy)
"Nobody is ever convinced by argument... They just think up new reasons for maintaining old positions and become more defensive." (Comstock Lode)
KNOWLEDGE, EDUCATION, AND LEARNING
"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." (The Walking Drum)
"A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from some pretty elegant furnishings." (Bendigo Shafter)
"Much can be learned from books, but much remains about which no book has been written. Remember this: the poor peasant, the hunter, or the fisherman may have knowledge that scholars are struggling to learn." (The Lonesome Gods)
"Much of what I say may be nonsense, but a few things I have learned, and the most important is that he who ceases to learn is already a half-dead man." (The Lonesome Gods)
"An artist needs freedom, he needs innovation, he needs opportunity, he needs to create." (Last of the Breed)
"There are many who assume that once they have become men there is nothing to be learned from books." (The Lonesome Gods)
"...all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you an education." (The Lonesome Gods)
"Because a man doesn't speak good English doesn't mean he doesn't have good ideas." (Ride the River)
"Knowledge was meant to be shared." (Jubal Sackett)
"You have come into this world with good health and a good mind. The rest is up to you." (The Lonesome Gods)
MONEY, WEATH, AND POVERTY
"A lot of people wish to find treasure, but few of them realize how hard it is to handle after you've got it." (Treasure Mountain)
"...gold is forever heavy." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
"Where there is gold... there is blood."(The Walking Drum)
"I tell you, gold is easier found than kept." (Treasure Mountain)
"Once you are in debt... you are carrying another man's weight, and it will be him who sits in the saddle and his hands on the reins." (Comstock Lode)
"There were some poor folks up where we come from, but they weren't poor in the things that make a man." (Lonely on the Mountain)
WINNING, LOSING, AND LUCK
"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." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
"Victory is not won in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later win a little more." (The Walking Drum)
THE FRONTIER
"A man has to blaze his own trail, and mine was to the west." (Jubal Sackett)
"People who live in comfortable, settled towns with law-abiding citizens and a government to protect them, they never think of the men who came first, the ones who went through hell to build something." (Sackett)
"The frontier asked no questions and gave its rewards to the strong." (The Daybreakers)
"...we who pass do not own this land, we but use it, we hold it briefly in trust for those yet to come. We must not reap without seeding, we must not take from the earth without replacing." (The Lonesome Gods)
"...the greatest myth is that of the discovery of any country, for all countries were known in the long ago, and all seas sailed in times gone by." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
"...against the western sky there were mountains, blue and distant mountains. I must pass through them. I must see what lies beyond." (Sacketts Land)
"Tye, this is big country out here and it takes big men to live in it, but it gives every man an equal opportunity. You're just as big or small as your vision is, and if you've a mind to work and make something of yourself, you can do it." (The Daybreakers)
"All I know is that I shall never rest easy until I have gone into the desert alone. Until I have followed some of those trails to wherever they go." (The Lonesome Gods)
INDIANS
"The ethics of the white man are his own, and contrary to what he may believe, are not shared by others. Not in all cases, at least. Each people has its own standards, often similar, yet with notable differences." (Bendigo Shafter)
"If I make one last prayer I ask that your god grant me an enemy. If I have an enemy, even one enemy, I can be strong." (Jubal Sackett)
"The Indian lived a life that demanded courage, demanded strength, stamina, and the will to survive; and the white men who came first to the mountains had such qualities—or they would not have come in the first place, and they could not have lasted in the second."(Treasure Mountain)
HONOR, THE LAW, AND JUSTICE
"You asked if I have reverence? I have reverence for truth, but I do not know what truth is. I suspect there are many truths, and therefore, I suspect all who claim to have the truth." (The Walking Drum)
"A lawman ...is not a restraint, but a freedom, a liberation. He restrains only those who would break the laws and provides freedom for the rest of us to work, to laugh, to sing, to play in peace." (Bendigo Shafter)
"When a man enters into society ... he agrees to abide by the rules of that society, and when he crosses those rules he becomes liable to judgment, and if he continues to cross them, then he becomes an outaw." (Sackett)
"...governments may change, but a people do not, nor does their basic thinking change." (The Lonesome Gods)
"I've a regard for the law, although I do not always agree with it." (Sackett's Land)
"Often ...I find it best to do what must be done without going through the usual channels." (The Warrior's Path)
"I want my son to learn what he can, but most of all I wish him to be a citizen, to judge issues, to use logic in his thinking, to respect his country and its people." (Bendigo Shafter)
WILD PLACES, WILD LIFE
"I think I am in this world to find beauty in lonely places." (Jubal Sackett)
"A big country can breed big men." (Bendigo Shafter)
"Every step a man takes in desert country has to be taken with water in mind." (The Lonely Men)
"To truly know the mountains, one should go to meet them as one would meet a sweetheart, alone." (Last of the Breed)
"Study the sky and the trees, the tracks of animals and the way the birds fly. You can learn things no book will ever teach you." (Conagher)
"How many times 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." (Bendigo Shafter)
"Get hold of some land. It will last and be there when all the rest has changed. Everything else fades with time, but the land stays there." (The Lonesome Gods)
"How big a man is depends on how big a territory he's in." (Passin' Through)
"Out there where the forest brushes the sky, that's my kind of country." (Ride the River)
"A man who travels wild country gets to studying where he's coming from, because some day he might have to go back, and a trail looks a lot different when you ride over it in the opposite direction." (Mojave Crossing)
"Eastern folks might call this adventure, but it is one thing to read of an adventure sitting in an easy chair with a cool drink at hand, and quite another thing to be belly down in the hot dust with four, five Indians coming up the slope at you with killing on their minds." (The Daybreakers)
"It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails." (The Lonesome Gods)
"But you do not know what music is until you have heard the wind in the cedars, or the far-off wind in the pines. Someday I am going to get on a horse and ride out there." (Conagher)
"Yet we must never forget that the land and the waters are ours for the moment only, that generations will follow who must themselves live from that land and drink that water. It would not be enough to leave something for them; we must leave it all a little better than we found it." (The Lonesome Gods)
TRUST
"Trust yourself. You know this country. If you're uneasy, there's a reason. Your senses have perceived something your brain hasn't." (The Lonesome Gods)
"Most folks can be trusted up to a point, but it always seemed to me the best thing was not to put temptation in their way." (Mojave Crossing)
"Begin to depend on no one but yourself. The fewer people whom you trust, the fewer on whom you rely, the better for you. Especially when traveling." (Bendigo Shafter)
"It always seemed to me that a man who would betray the trust of his fellow citizens is the lowest of all..." (Lando)
"Be friendly with all men and censure none, tell nobody too much of your affairs and remember in all dealings with men, or women, to keep one hand upon the door latch ...in your mind, at least." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
MEN AND BRAVERY
"I've nothing against a man being scared as long as he does what has to be done ...being scared can keep a man from getting killed and often makes a better fighter of him." (The Daybreakers)
"Yet each move one makes is a risk, and if one thinks too long one does not move at all, for fear of what may come, and so becomes immobile, crouched in a shell, fearful of any move." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
"A man who says he has never been scared is either lying or else he's never been any place or done anything." (Sackett)
"When I die sword in hand, I hope someone lives to sing of it. I live my life so that when death comes I may die well. I ask no more." (Sackett's Land)
"Those were tough men ...and a tough man with a will to live is a hard man to kill." (Chancy)
"They feared what they did not understand." (The Walking Drum)
"Think ...and act with coolness. Do what must be done." (The Lonesome Gods)
"...Do not be afraid. A little fear can make one cautious. Too much fear can rob you of initiative. Respect fear, but use it for an incentive, do not let it bind you or tie you down." (The Lonesome God)
"A knife is sharpened on stone, steel is tempered by fire, but men must be sharpened by men." (The Walking Drum)
"There are good men everywhere... I only wish they had louder voices." (Last of the Breed)
"A bulky, heavy man, was it fat or muscle? Some of the most powerful men he had ever seen looked fat." (Comstock Lode)
"There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness." (Ride the Dark Trail)
"Neither age nor size makes a man..." (The Lonesome Gods)
"It is the willingness to accept responsibility, I think, that is the measure of a man." (Bendigo Shafter)
"A man can carve from stone, he can write fine words, or he can do something to hold himself in the hearts of people." (Treasure Mountain)
POWER AND STRENGTH
"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 Lonesome Gods)
"Her fear gave me strength, for when is one not the stronger through being needed?" (The Walking Drum)
VIOLENCE AND CRIME
"A man who wishes to kill ...must also be ready to die." (The Walking Drum)
"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 hairtrigger, he'd be likely to blow a hole in his belly." (The Sky-Liners)
"Every man wishes to believe that when trouble appears he will stand up to it, yet no man knows it indeed before it happens." (Lando)
"The more ill-prepared people are to face trouble, the more likely they are to revert to savagery against each other." (Bendigo Shafter)
"A bad reputation can get a man in a lot of trouble, but once in a while it can be a help." (Ride the Dark Trail)
"It is wrong to believe that such men suffer in the conscience for what they do ...it is only regret at being caught that troubles them. And they never admit it was any fault of their own ... it was always chance, bad luck... The criminal does not regret his crime, he only regrets failure." (Lando)
"There's an old adage that to win a street fight one had best land the first punch." (Bendigo Shafter)
"Hate would destroy him who hated." (The Lonesome Gods)
"Hate clouds the mind. It is better to have no emotion when it is work. Do what needs to be done, and do it coolly." (Last of the Breed)
"Long ago I'd been taught that all guns were to be considered as loaded and were to be handled with care..." (The Lonesome Gods)
"He did not shoot hastily, yet he did fire rapidly, and there was a difference, for he seemed to make every shot count." (The Lonesome Gods)
"Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is the violence they want and neither truth nor freedom." (The Walking Drum)
SURVIVAL
"I have found it is better to eat when one can, for one never knows when he will eat again." (Sackett's Land)
"Sometimes the damned fool things a man does are the ones that save his bacon." (Mojave Crossing)
"If they wish to survive in this new world, they must work." (The Lonesome Gods)
"A man who travels with another is only half as watchful as when traveling alone, and often less than half, for a part of his attention is diverted by his companion." (Jubal Sackett)
"I liked not to sleep too warm but cool enough to sleep lightly so my ears can hear what moves about." (The Warrior's Path)
"It is a thing a man must forever guard, that he not twist an ankle badly or break a leg, for to be down and helpless is often to die." (The Warrior's Path)
"Knowledge might be power, but it was also the key to survival." (The Walking Drum)
"A little warmth and a little food and he felt much better. Man needs so little ...yet he begins wanting so much." (Last of the Breed)
"...Fool thing, looking into a fire. When you look away you're blind ...and men have been killed thataway. (Mojave Crossing)
DEATH
"To die for what one believes is all very well for those so inclined, but it has always seemed to me the most vain of solutions. There is no cause worth dying for that is not better served by living." (The Walking Drum)
"If he be a man indeed, he must always go on, he must always endure. Death is an end to torture, to struggle, to suffering, but it is also an end to warmth, light, the beauty of a running horse, the smell of damp leaves, of gunpowder, the walk of a woman when she knows someone watches..." (Galloway)
"I do not expect to be remembered ...only enjoyed." (The Walking Drum)
WAR AND FIGHTING
"No matter how many times you get knocked down you got to keep gettin' up until the other man quits." (Treasure Mountain)
"...fightin's something you do when you've tried everything else." (The Lonesome Gods)
"Just because a man can shoot, it doesn't turn him into a fightin' man." (Lonely on the Mountain)
"So much of any fight depends on the terrain and how a body uses it." (The Sky-Liners)
"My father, a skilled fighting man, always told me to notice the position of a man's feet, for if a man can be taken off-balance he can be beaten. There is a limit to how far a man can reach without shifting his feet." (The Walking Drum)
"You see, Ox, you've always been big, you've always been strong, you've always been able to either frighten or out-muscle anybody whose trail you crossed. So the truth is, you've never really had to learn to fight." (Lonely on the Mountain)
"One fights one's batdes alone, not asking mercy nor expecting help." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
"To survive at all, I must fight only to win." (The Walking Drum)
"Sometimes a show of force can prevent trouble." (Comstock Lode)
"...enemies can make one strong." (The Lonesome Gods)
"A man needs enemies to keep him wary and strong..." (Conagher)
YONDERING AND DREAMING
"For I wanted a life wider and deeper than my own Breton shores could offer. To make my way in a larger world, to see more, to learn more, to be more. This was my dream." The Walking Drum)
"Forever the dream is in the mind, realization in the hands." (To the Far Blue Mountains)
"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." Bendi£fo Shafter)
"My future is one I must make myself..." (Sackett's Land)
"Most of all I needed what all men need, a destination. I wanted to become something, for in the last analysis it is not what people think of a man but what he thinks of himself." (Bendigo Shafter)
"He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go." (Comstock Lode)
"He always thought better while working, walking, or riding. Somehow physical activity was conducive to thinking, at least if the activity called for no particular attention." (Comstock Lode)
"The first goal need not be the fmal 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." (The Walking Drum)
"Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it." (Bendigo Shaffer)
"I do not know, but I think it is something buried within us, something that makes us long for the far places." (Jubal Sackett)
"It goes to show you. People don't wear out, they give up. And as far as trails go, there's always an open trail for the mind if you keep the doors open and give it a chance." (Bendigo Shafter)
"...perhaps he is a poet whose dreams are too large for his words. (The Lonesome Gods)