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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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
One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance
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
Long ago I learned nothing gets done by just wishing it. You have to do it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Action
A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance
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
Revenge could steal a man’s life until there was nothing left but emptiness.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Revenge, Forgiveness
Pa, he always said a man had to look spry for himself, because nobody would do it for him; your opportunities didn’t come knocking around, you had to hunt them down and hog-tie them.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Self-reliance, Confidence, Success
He never knew when. he was whipped … so he never was.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Perseverance, Resolve, Endurance
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
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
Being scared can keep a man from getting killed and often makes a better fighter of him.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
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: Difficulties, Adversity
He who plants a tree is a servant of God.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Nature
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
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: The Future, Beginnings, Beginning
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
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
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
You can’t tight the desert… you have to ride with it.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Acceptance
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
I have been nothing … but there is tomorrow.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Tomorrow, The Future
A body shouldn’t heed what might be. He’s got to do with what is.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Acceptance
What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Dedication, Commitment
I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Self-reliance
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Belief, Faith
Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble.
—Louis L’Amour
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, Resolve, Endurance
Hate would destroy him who hated.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Forgiveness, Hatred
He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.
—Louis L’Amour
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
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