
I recently purchased and read the Thomas Jefferson Education which has inspired me to want to read more books that are considered “Classics”. In his book, Oliver Van DeMille has a few lists of books he recommends as classics. The first one I decided to read was The Lonesome Gods by Louis L’Amour. Here’s what I put in my review on Good Reads which I finally decided to join, now that I’m finally becoming more of a “reader”.
Oh, and for any of you TJEd fans, check out the Thomas Jefferson Education Consortium. It looks to be a good discussion board for the classics, among other things mentioned in his book.
The Lonesome Gods by Louis L’Amour
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was the first western I’ve ever read (at least as best I can recall), and probably one of the longer books I’ve read. I wouldn’t have chosen it other than it was the only book the library had of the 5 classics I was looking for suggested from the Thomas Jefferson Education. It was surprisingly good and had many great nuggets of wisdom. Here are my favorite quotes (with page numbers at the beginning of each quote):
115 – Johannes’s dad – “How young is too young to begin to discover the power and the beauty of words? Perhaps he will not understand, but there is a clash of shields and a call of trumpets in those lines. One cannot begin too young nor linger too long with learning….People, I think, read too much to themselves; they should read aloud from time to time to hear the language, to feel the sounds. “Homer told his stories accompanied by the lyre, and it was the best way, I think, to tell such stories. Men needed stories to lead them to create, to build, to conquer, even to survive, and without them the human race would have vanished long ago. Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle….My friend, I do not know what else Ishall leave my son, but if I have left him a love of language, of literature, a taste for Homer, for thte poets, the people who have told our story – and by ‘our’ I mean the story of mankind – then he will have legacy enough.
164 – Fraser – “Listen to the men who come here. Listen well. Education is by no means confined to schools. Listen to such men talk, hear their philosophy, their ideas about the country, about business, trade, shipping, politics. Listen and learn. Some people only learn by reading, others by doing or seeing, some by hearing. Learn however you can, but learn!”165 – Mr. Fraser – “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 an education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself. I hope, in these classes to give you an idea of where you came from, how you got here, and what has been said about it.”
173 – Miss Nesselrode – “Neither age nor size makes a man, Johannes. It is willingness to accept responsibility.”
175 – Miss Nesselrode – “Our Constitution provides that no law shall forbid us from keeping and bearing arms because of the necessity for a militia. We have a militia of a sort, but our greatest strength lies in the fact that so many of our people not only possess weapons but also understand their use, and above all they are prepared to defend themselves against any sudden attack by an enemy. You will remember that we won our freedom because we were armed. We were not a simple peasantry unused to weapons. The men who wrote our Constitution knew our people would be safe as long as they were armed.”
177 – Fraser – “You are history. Do not think of history as something remote that concerns only king, queens, and generals. It concerns you…You and your families march across the pages of history, and often he who plows a furrow is of more importance than he who leads an army. The army can destroy, the furrow can feed…Each of you is a part of what is happening here. Do not think you can sit idly by while it grows to a great city, as it assuredly will. A city is made up of citizens, and citizens are so called because they inhabit a city, and if they will, can direct its destiny.”
211 – Johannes – “No individual completely acquires the experience of another, but if even a small part may be carried over to the next generation, much time can be saved. In technical ways, methods of working and such, knowledge has been passed on, but too few have learned from experience. I remembered my father once saying that perhaps in the future some device might be constructed to which all historical knowledge could be fed, particularly all knowledge of government, of diplomacy, of statecraft, and then this device might tell us what mistakes have been continually made and what situations to avoid. Men have passed on the knowledge of how to mix cement, lay brick, splice a line, navigate a ship, make steel, and dozens of other crafts, yet in politics, statecraft and social relationships we continue to repeat old mistakes.
242 – Johannes – “We are nothing until we make ourselves something…I do not know what I shall be except that I wish to be something, to be someone…what I wish is to be complete in myself.” Ramon – “Not too complete – to be too complete is often to be lonely. A man needs a woman, and a woman a man. It is the way of things.”
246 – Ramon – “Do you think this Tahquitz a monster?”Johannes – “No, he reads. No one who reads can quite be a monster. Or, perhaps he is only partially a monster.”Ramon – “I cannot read.”Johannes – “But you think, and you listen.”
328 – Miss Nesselrode – “Human relationships are often fragile, they need to be nurtured until they can put down roots, and Johannes is one of the most complete human beings I have known…What you must understand is that Johannes does not need anyone.”Meghan – “Then what chance would there be for me?”Miss N – “I said he did not need anyone. I did not say that he did not want someone. He told me once that happiness was born a twin, that it must be shared.”
336 – Johannes – “Great wealth had never been one of my ambitions. It was more important for me to become a good human being, and to learn, for there was so much to learn, from the Cahuillas, from the desert and mountains, from books, and from the people around me.”
341 – Johannes – “They rode forth to battle without a flag except that flown by their own courage, loyal to the last fiber of their being, and strong with the knowledge that if men are to survive upon the earth there must be law, and there must be justice, and all men must stand together against those who would strike at the roots of what men have so carefully built….We have hedged ourselves round with law, for we know that if man is to survive it must be through cooperative effort.”
342 – Johannes – “If man is to vanish from the earth, let him vanish in the moment of creation, when he is creating something new, opening a path to the tomorrow he may never see. It is man’s nature to reach out, to grasp for the tangible on the way to the intangible.”
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