Louis L'Amour Quotes

Folks can’t seem to realize that it isn’t a smooth talker we need in there but a steady man, a man with judgement. Any medicine-show man can spout words, if they are written for him. It takes no genius to sound well. To act right and at the right time is something else again.

"I'm sorry! I really am! I wanted to get out of this place! I want to live! I want to get away from here and never see it again! I hate everything about it!"

"You will hate the next place, too," I said. "What you are you will carry with you."

People only talk about how wonderful youth is when they have forgotten how hard it was.

"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."

"It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each trail better than he had found it. "Tread lightly on the paths," he had told me. "Others will come when you have gone."

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."

The blood of good men makes the earth rich

It is a living. It is enough. I am free. The nights are long and quiet, the mornings cool and bright, I live with the sun, the moon, and the stars. The air is fresh where I am, and there is no one to hurry me or to demand this or that of me.

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.

Only, the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a crime. If a man is going to vote, if he’s going to take part in his country and its government, then it’s up to him to understand.

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.

The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.

"Yol Bolsun" (May there be a road) [Louis L'Amour}

Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years.

The more one learns the more he understands his ignorance. I am simply an ignorant man, trying to lessen his ignorance.