The voices / 109 fragments

Louis L'Amour

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Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Archive entries

01Undated

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

Louis L'Amour / quote

02Undated

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

Louis L'Amour / quote

03Undated

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 / quote

04Undated

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 / quote

05Undated

It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He was a man who didn't believe in violence, He's a good man... and dead.

Louis L'Amour / quote

06Undated

The desert was a school, a school where each day, each hour, a final examination was offered, where failure meant death and the buzzards landed to correct the papers.

Louis L'Amour / quote

07Undated

The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw-taking ceremony?""Tell me.""Varlebena. It means forever. That's all they say.

Louis L'Amour / quote

08Undated

The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.

Louis L'Amour / quote

09Undated

If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

Louis L'Amour / quote

10Undated

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 / quote

11Undated

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

Louis L'Amour / quote

12Undated

Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one.

Louis L'Amour / quote

13Undated

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

Louis L'Amour / quote

14Undated

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 / quote

15Undated

A journey is time suspended.

Louis L'Amour / quote

16Undated

It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the canon of religious or political belief, and it is a poor sort of man who will permit others to dictate what he may or may not learn.

Louis L'Amour / quote

17Undated

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

Louis L'Amour / quote

18Undated

Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.

Louis L'Amour / quote

19Undated

There are many ways of fighting. Many a man or woman has waged a good war for truth, honor, and freedom, who did not shed blood in the process. Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is the violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

Louis L'Amour / quote

20Undated

Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area to what was happening elsewhere, and what had happened in the past. To view a period in isolation is to miss whatever message it has to offer.

Louis L'Amour / quote

21Undated

Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it. I say this, who am Mathurin Kerbouchard, a homeless wanderer upon the earth's far roads. I speak as one who has known hunger and feast, poverty and riches, the glory of the sword and the humility of the defenseless. Hunger inspires no talent, and carried too far, it deadens the faculties and destroys initiative...

Louis L'Amour / quote

22Undated

It means little to anybody but us. We set store by kinfolk. We've our troubles from time to time, but when one of us is in danger, there'll be help from any who are around.

Louis L'Amour / quote

23Undated

Personally, I do not believe the human mind has any limits but those we impose ourselves.

Louis L'Amour / quote

24Undated

Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.

Louis L'Amour / quote