Louis L'Amour Quotes

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.

My father had lived through wars and troubles, and it left him with a sense that nothing lasted but what a man made of himself.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

I have told many, yet when I go down that last trail, I know there will be a thousand stories hammering at my skull, demanding to be told.

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

it is better to eat when one can, for one never knows when he will eat again.

That was the trouble with California in the 1840's. The life was too easy, there was no necessity for struggle, and men must struggle or they deteriorate.

deep blue. She was beautiful, not merely pretty, but there was in her eyes the haughty disdain of a queen reprimanding a clumsy subject.

"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."

he revealed nothing. He nodded gravely. “I suppose it might be, ma’am, but I was hired to do the job and take the risks.” “Figured I’d offer,” Thomas said, unwilling to let the matter drop. “You tell me what you figure to do, and I’ll be glad to help.” “Another time.” The marshal tasted his coffee again and looked directly at the girl. “You are new in Sentinel. Will you be staying long?” “No.” “Do you have relatives here?” “No.” He waited, but no explanation was offered. Fitz Moore was puzzled and he studied her from the corners of his eyes. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the big, old-fashioned clock. The girl sat very still, the delicate line of her profile bringing to him a faint, lost feeling, a nostalgia from his boyhood when such women as she rode to hounds, when there was perfume on the air, blue grass, picket fences . . .

Men have passed on the knowledge of how to mix cement, lay brick, splice a line, navigate a ship, make steel, and dozens of other crafts, yet in politics, statecraft, and social relationships we continue to repeat old mistakes.

Some folks want the lights of cities, the admiration of women, and the fame that comes with success. Me, I just want the trail unwinding ahead of me, the view from the top of the ridge, and the smell of a wood-smoke fire.

"From Elisha Comes to Red Horse:

"I leave their politics and religion be. Folks can think the way they want, act the way they please, even to acting the fool. All I ask is they don't make too much noise and don't interfere with other people.

Too often she had listened to her father discourse on the necessity for peace and consideration of others. She believed in that policy wholeheartedly. The fact that occasionally violence was necessary did not alter her convictions one whit. No system of philosophy or ethics, no growth of goverenment, no improvement in living came without trial and struggle. Struggle, she had often heard her father say, was the law of growth. Without giving too much thought to it, she understood that such men as Rafe Caradec, Trigger Boyne, Tex Brisco and others of their ilk were needed. For all their violence, their occasional heedlessness and their desire to go their own way, they were building a new world in a rough and violent land where everything tended to extremes. Mountains were high, the praires wide, the streams roaring, the buffalo by the thousand, and tens of thousand. It was a land where nothing was small, nothing was simple. Everything, the lives of men and the stories they told, ran to extremes.

Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.