Louis L'Amour: It is not enough to do, one must also become. I wish to...

Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.

Louis L'Amour

fate life lying

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

regret men father

Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like, or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.

Louis L'Amour

important somewhere-else people

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Louis L'Amour

change time inspirational

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

slow-down ends missing

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

Louis L'Amour

doubt doe men

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

writing water ideas

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

winning time inspirational

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

teacher book children

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

answers advice teacher

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

Louis L'Amour

saddles hours dream

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

adversity inspirational memories

There are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices.

Louis L'Amour

good-man voice men

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

Louis L'Amour

mindfulness forever live-in-the-moment

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.

Louis L'Amour

girl wise fall

We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.

Louis L'Amour

taken wish dream

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

Louis L'Amour

appreciate ignorance

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.

Louis L'Amour

different people thinking

. . . What do you wish to be? What would you like to become?” I did not know, and I told her so, but the question worried me. Should I know? “There is time,” she said, “but the sooner you know, the sooner you can plan. To have a goal is the important thing, and to work toward it. Then, if you decide you wish to do something different, you will at least have been moving, you will have been going somewhere, you will have been learning.

Louis L'Amour

goal wish moving

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

Louis L'Amour

journey adventure travel

It is not enough to do, one must also become. I wish to be wiser, stronger, better. This--" I held out my hands "--this thing that is me is incomplete. It is only the raw material with which I have to work. I want to make it better than I received it.