Louis L'Amour Quotes

- This Indian wife you have...
- Had. She's dead.
- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up
an unhappy memory.
- I can't remember anything unhappy
about Destarte.

All men wish to be captains, but few men wish to shoulder the burden of decision, and in coming here with these others, I had staked a claim that I must wall against misfortune.

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.

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.

So simple a thing, a lighted fire, yet it was a symbol of man's first great step toward civilization, and it was his instinctive return to reality when times of trouble came.

If one has a book, Mr. Boone, One is never alone. They will talk to you when you want to listen, and when you tire of what they are saying, you just close the book. It will be waiting for you when you come back to it.

She'd never been one to think in terms of years, anyway. A person was what they were, and many a man at forty was sixty in his ways and many another was twenty and would never grow past it.

I've a regard for law, although I do not always agree with it. Without law, man becomes a beast.

There is nothing more dangerous than a woman with a shotgun. Because you don't know when it's going to go off...and neither does she.

A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. I read on buses, trains, and plains. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long?

If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.

There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of civilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little in order to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences, this is compromise. He who stands unyielding and immovable upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on.

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder. Yet I had faith in the intentions of my countrymen, no matter how far they might at times stray from those intentions.

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long.