Five Minute Friday ~ Good and Lonely

I recently ran across a collection of some Louis L'amour quotes. 

Some of these things attributed to him are like, "Wow!" - and I've just stopped to chew on them for awhile - so much wisdom, such real descriptions of life - crafted together with clever or powerful words.

I don't know about you, but his was one of those names I've seen for just about forever as I like to frequent book stores and exchanges. I have recently discovered those leave a book-take a book libraries - hotels, laundromats  guest houses, etc., as we've traveled about a lot this summer, and there's always a whole section of his books, looking well-read and frequently passed about. But I kinda disregarded them, giving them no more credit than the formula-ized, predictable romances also found in those same collections.

They may still be nothing more than that. I've not read one... but I'm intrigued enough now to give at least one a chance (or maybe I'll just watch one of the old John Wayne movies based off of one... don't know yet). Even if his books are of the more predictable sort, if the collection of quotes I've been reading is any indication, it would be time well spent - what I've shared here is only a few of many.

However, I loved some of his quotes - lots of wisdom, at times quaintly phrased, other times pithy and sometimes even just plain sappy. I don't even know if he "was" a cowboy who'd taken lots of lonely trail rides over the course of his life, giving him lots of time to think, to pray, to reflect... but he apparently wrote somewhat knowledgeably about that milieu.

And that has had me thinking about how sometimes God has to gift us with those lonely riding opportunities - to get us in a position to where we are open to listening and hearing what He has to say... through His Word, His creation, the wisdom of others, experience... to learn to worship Him, even when we don't feel like it.

Hope you enjoy my little collection of "Louis L'amour quotes" - Let me know which one is your favorite and why!

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“Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's [not] when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.” 

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

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

“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.”

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

“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.” 

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

“. . . 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.” 

“The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast,

and you miss all you are traveling for.” 

“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.” 

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

“I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: 

the need to know and to learn.” 

“No one can "get" an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.” 

“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.” 

“Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, 

rarely of what they had seen” 

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; 

that will be the beginning. ”

**Thanks to Anna for the photos. She discovered the corrals behind one of the campgrounds where we stayed as we traveled through the western United States. She DOES love horses!

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Head on over to Lisa Jo's if you'd like to join with us this week.