He never knew when. he was whipped … so he never was.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Endurance, Resolve, Perseverance
Hate would destroy him who hated.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Hatred, Forgiveness
Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around 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. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, ‘This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.’ The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Tomorrow, Self-reliance, Attitude, Self-Discovery, The Future, Confidence
She had believed the land was her enemy, and she struggled against it, but you could not make war against a land any more than you could against the sea. One had to learn to live with it, to belong to it, to fit into its seasons and its ways.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Men, Acceptance
For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: The Future, Tomorrow
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Belief, Faith
We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Motivation
The one law that does not change is that everything changes, and the hardship I was bearing today was only a breath away from the pleasures I would have tomorrow, and those pleasures would be all the richer because of the memories of this I was enduring.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Difficulty, Change
A man shares his days with hunger, thirst, and cold, with the good times and the bad, and the first part of being a man is to understand that.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance, Bad Times
One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance
One thing we learned. To make a start and keep plugging. When I had fights at school, the little while I went, I just bowed my neck and kept swinging until something hit the dirt. Sometimes it was me, but I always got up.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Endurance, Resolve, Perseverance
I am somebody. I am me. I like being me. And I need nobody to make me somebody.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Realization, Acceptance, Awareness
Man needs so little… yet he begins wanting so much.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Gratitude, Appreciation, Blessings
Some say opportunity knocks only once, That is not true. Opportunity knocks all the time, but you have to be ready for it. If the chance comes, you must have the equipment to take advantage of it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Opportunity
He who plants a tree is a servant of God.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Nature
Revenge could steal a man’s life until there was nothing left but emptiness.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Forgiveness, Revenge
Enemies can be an incentive to survive and become someone in spite of them. Enemies can keep you alert and aware.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Difficulties, Adversity
Long ago I learned nothing gets done by just wishing it. You have to do it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Action
To exist is to adapt, and if one could not adapt, one died and made room for those who could.
—Louis L’Amour
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.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Reading
Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Books
When I was a small boy I often went to the woods to lie on the grass in the shade. Somehow I had come to believe the earth could give me wisdom, but it did not. Yet I learned a little about animals and learned it is not always brave to make a stand. It is often foolish. There is a time for courage and a time for flight.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Bravery
A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Worry, Defeat, Accepting The Worst
A man who says he has never been scared is either lying or else he’s never been any place or done anything.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Fear
A man can lose sight of everything else when he’s bent on revenge, and it ain’t worth it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Forgiveness, Revenge
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.
—Louis L’Amour
There have always been hard times. There have always been wars and troubles
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Character
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.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Adversity, Difficulties
Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble.
—Louis L’Amour
To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Voting
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Raymond Chandler American Novelist
- Richard Wright American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- John Updike American Author
- Margaret Mitchell American Novelist
- Robert Anton Wilson American Polymath
- John Irving American Novelist
- John Cheever American Novelist
- George R. R. Martin American Writer
- Robert A. Heinlein American Science Fiction Writer
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