Louis LAmour Quotes - Page 2

Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow.

Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance.

Books are the building blocks of civilization, for without the written word, a man knows nothing beyond what occurs during his own brief years and, perhaps, in a few tales his parents tell him.

The saddle is a place for dreaming when there's hours of trail ahead.

... we must read, not only for what we read but for what it makes us think.

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.

I am somebody. I am me. And I don't need anybody to make me somebody.

Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit.

There's no stopping a man who knows he's in the right and keeps a-coming.

You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that is how much of a hole you leave when you're gone.

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. Those who are truly wise will never permit such moments to escape.

When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.

My future is one I must make myself.

The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don't have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail.

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.

One who returns to a place sees it with new eyes. Although the place may not have changed, the viewer inevitably has. For the first time things invisible before become suddenly visible.

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.

A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

One never realizes how much and how little he knows until he starts talking.

A true gentleman is at a disadvantage in dealing with women. Women are realists, and their tactics are realistic, so no man should be a gentleman where women are concerned unless the women are very, very old or very, very young. Women admire gentlemen, and sleep with cads.

To die is nothing. One is here, one is no longer here. It is only at the end one must be able to say 'I was a man'.

Our libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth.

Living a life is much like climbing mountains-the summits are always further off than you think, but when a man has a goal, he always feels he's working toward something.

Books are the perfect Time Machine. By the simple act of opening a book you can, in an instant, be travelling up a jungle river without once being bitten by mosquitoes, or you can almost die of thirst in the desert while holding a cold drink in your hand, or dine in the finest restaurants and never have to worry about paying the bill, or ride the wild country of our western frontier and never worry about losing your scalp to a raiding party.

He never knew when he was whipped ... So he never was.