Top 300 Louis L'Amour Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”

— Louis L'Amour

Featured in: Quotes About Writing

2. “The only thing that never changes is that everything changes.”

— Louis L'Amour

3. “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.”

— Louis L'Amour

4. “A good beginning makes a good end.”

— Louis L'Amour

5. “A ship does not sail with yesterday’s wind.”

— Louis L'Amour

6. “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

7. “Knowledge was meant to be shared.”

— Louis L'Amour

8. “Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.”

— Louis L'Amour

9. “You are your own best teacher. My advice is to question all things. Seek for answers, and when you find what seems to be an answer, question that, too.”

— Louis L'Amour

10. “There’s no stopping a man who knows he’s in the right and keeps a-coming.”

— Louis L'Amour

11. “Today is all we have, tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.”

— Louis L'Amour

12. “The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast, and you miss all you are traveling for.”

— Louis L'Amour

13. “Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it.”

— Louis L'Amour

14. “Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.”

— Louis L'Amour

15. “Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.”

— Louis L'Amour

16. “I am somebody. I am me. And I don’t need anybody to make me somebody.”

— Louis L'Amour

17. “Have faith in God but keep your powder dry.”

— Louis L'Amour

18. “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

19. “When I die, remember that what you knew of me is with you always. What is buried is only the shell of what was. Do not regret the shell, but remember the man. Remember the father.”

— Louis L'Amour

20. “All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I.”

— Louis L'Amour

21. “Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”

— Louis L'Amour

22. “It is better to have no emotion when it is work. Do what needs to be done, and do it coolly.”

— Louis L'Amour

23. “Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.”

— Louis L'Amour

24. “Adventure is nothing but a romantic name for trouble.”

— Louis L'Amour

25. “Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.”

— Louis L'Amour

26. “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

27. “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.”

— Louis L'Amour

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

— Louis L'Amour

29. “For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived.”

— Louis L'Amour

30. “The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever.”

— Louis L'Amour

31. “A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.”

— Louis L'Amour

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

— Louis L'Amour

33. “One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives.”

— Louis L'Amour

34. “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.”

— Louis L'Amour

35. “There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.”

— Louis L'Amour

36. “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.”

— Louis L'Amour

37. “When you go to a country, you must learn how to say two things: how to ask for food, and to tell a woman that you love her. Of these the second is more important, for if you tell a woman you love her, she will certainly feed you.”

— Louis L'Amour

38. “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.”

— Louis L'Amour

39. “Long ago I learned nothing gets done by just wishing it. You have to do it.”

— Louis L'Amour

40. “To a fool time brings only age not wisdom.”

— Louis L'Amour

41. “No memory is ever alone; it’s at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.”

— Louis L'Amour

42. “A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.”

— Louis L'Amour

43. “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.”

— Louis L'Amour

44. “Politics is the art of making civilization work.”

— Louis L'Amour

45. “Es wird eine Zeit kommen, in der man glaubt, dass alles zu Ende ist. Das wird der Anfang sein.”

— Louis L'Amour

46. “Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.”

— Louis L'Amour

47. “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

48. “A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.”

— Louis L'Amour

49. “My future is one I must make myself.”

— Louis L'Amour

50. “A man can learn a lot if he listens, and if I didn’t learn anything else I was learning how much I didn’t know.”

— Louis L'Amour