Louis L'Amour Quotes

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

The mind gathers its grain in all fields, storing it against a time of need, then suddenly it bursts into awareness, which men call inspiration or second sight or a gift.

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 . . .

he who ceases to learn is already a half-dead man. And do not be like an oyster who rests on the sea bottom waiting for the good things to come by. Search for them, find them.

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.

Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by archeologists of the future. Surely, the citizens and the rulers of Babylon and Rome did not see themselves as a passing phase. Each in its time believed it was the end-all of the world’s progression. I have no such feeling. Each age is a day that is dying, each one a dream that is fading. Someday, men — or some other intelligent creatures — will stand on the sites of New York or Los Angeles and wonder if anyone ever lived there.

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.

You will remember that we won our freedom because we were armed. We were not a simple peasantry unused to weapons. The men who wrote our Constitution knew our people would be safe as long as they were armed.

NO MAN KNOWS the hour of his ending, nor can he choose the place or the manner of his going. To each it is given to die proudly, to die well, and this is, indeed, the final measure of the man.

I've noticed...that whenever a man is asked to be realistic he is being asked to betray something in which he believes. It is the favorite argument of those who believe that only the end matters, not the means.

Personally, I do not believe the human mind has any limits but those we impose ourselves.

To die is nothing. One is here, one is no longer here. It is only at the end one must be able to say 'I was a man'.

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

No man ever raised a monument to a cynic or wrote a poem about a man without faith.

My own education, which is the one I know most about, has been haphazard, a hit-and-miss affair that was and continues to be thoroughly delightful. 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.