Louis Dearborn L’Amour was an American novelist and short-story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels; however, he also wrote historical fiction, science fiction, non-fiction, as well as poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into films. L’Amour’s books remain popular and most have gone through multiple printings. At the time of his death almost all of his 105 existing works were still in print, and he was “one of the world’s most popular writers”.
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Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Books
Trade is much superior to piracy. You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Honesty
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
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
Man needs so little… yet he begins wanting so much.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Blessings, Appreciation, Gratitude
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: The Future, Tomorrow, Self-Discovery, Confidence, Attitude, Self-reliance
Being scared can keep a man from getting killed and often makes a better fighter of him.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Anxiety, Fear
He who plants a tree is a servant of God.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Nature
Any man can shoot a gun, and with practice he can draw fast and shoot accurately, but that makes no difference. What counts is how you stand up when somebody is shooting back at you.
—Louis L’Amour
For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
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
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Belief, Faith
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: Perseverance, Endurance, Resolve
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
A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one’s life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: The Mind
A body shouldn’t heed what might be. He’s got to do with what is.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Acceptance
Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before—it takes something from him.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Forgiveness, Anger
Victory is won not in miles, but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later win a little more.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Winning, One Step at a Time, Victory
A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance
What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Dedication, Commitment
To exist is to adapt, and if one could not adapt, one died and made room for those who could.
—Louis L’Amour
I fear there will be no future for those who do not change.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: The Future, Future, Tomorrow
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: Change, Difficulty
There have always been hard times. There have always been wars and troubles
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Character
Revenge could steal a man’s life until there was nothing left but emptiness.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Revenge, Forgiveness
You can’t tight the desert… you have to ride with it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance
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
I have been nothing … but there is tomorrow.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: The Future, Tomorrow
A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Worry, Accepting The Worst, Defeat
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
Few of us ever live in the present, we are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: The Present
The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me and nothing before me but hope.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Hope
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
He never knew when. he was whipped … so he never was.
—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: Awareness, Acceptance, Realization
This—this was what made life: a moment of quiet, the water falling in the fountain, the girl’s voice … a moment of captured beauty. He who is truly wise will never permit such moments to escape.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: The Present
My future is one I must make myself.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Self-reliance, Confidence
One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance
A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realist, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Men & Women
Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble.
—Louis L’Amour
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