Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Laura Ingalls Wilder - Page 2

We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.

That which is the wonder of one age is the commonplace of the next.

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?" "They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now." But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods,… She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.

People used to have time to live and enjoy themselves, but there is no time anymore for anything but work, work, work.

there is a spirit in every home, a sort of composite spirit composed of the thoughts and feelings of the members of the family as a composite photograph is formed of the features of different individuals.

All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it . . . bearing them all away to the green fields in the South.

Many a good beginning makes a bad ending.

The uplift of a fearless heart will help us over barriers. No one ever overcomes difficulties by going at them in a hesitant, doubtful way.

The world seems a lonesome place when mother has passed away and only memories of her are left.

There's no great loss without some small gain.

We had no choice. Sadness was a dangerous as panthers and bears. the wilderness needs your whole attention.

When Pa was at home the gun always lay across those two wooden hooks above the door. ... The gun was always loaded, and always above the door so that Pa could get it quickly and easily, any time he needed a gun.

I believe we would be happier to have a personal revolution in our individual lives and go back to simpler living and more direct thinking.

We are the heirs of the ages; but the estate is entailed, as large estates frequently are, so that while we inherit the earth, the great round world which is God's footstool, we have only the use of it while we live and must pass it on to those come after us. We hold the property in trust and have no right to injure it or to lessen its value. To do so is dishonest, stealing from our heirs their inheritance.

Money hasn't any value of its own; it represents the stored up energy of men and women and is really just someone's promise to pay a certain amount of that energy.

She thought to herself, "This is now." She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)

Ma sighed gently and said, "A whole year gone, Charles." But Pa answered, cheerfully: "What's a year amount to? We have all the time there is.

Oh no, I never do much ironing, except the outside clothes. We must not iron out the fresh air and sunshine, you know. It is much more healthful not to, the doctors say.” Seriously, there is something very refreshing about sheets and pillow slips just fresh from the line, after being washed and dried in the sun and air. Just try them that way and see if your sleep is not sweeter.

We go lightheartedly on our way, never thinking that by a careless word or two we may have altered the whole course of human lives, for some person will take our advice and use it.

If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of a light," Ma considered. "We didn't lack for light when I was a girl before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of." "That's so," said Pa. "These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves--they're good things to have, but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.

Life begins at eighty.

The life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. All the wild seeds of weed and thistle, the sprouts of vine and bush and tree, are trying to take the fields. Farmers must fight them with harrow and plow and hoe; they must plant the good seeds quickly.

The uplift of a fearless heart will help us over barriers.

Vices are simply overworked virtues.

Never bet your money on another man's game.

The incurable optimism of the farmer who throws his seed on the ground every spring, betting it and his time against the elements, seemed inextricably to blend with the creed of her pioneer forefathers that "it is better farther on"-- only instead of farther on in space, it was farther on in time, over the horizon of the years ahead instead of the far horizon of the west.

There is nothing wrong with God's plan that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.

The days have never been long enough to do the things I would like to do. Every year has held more of interest than the year before.

She heard pa shouting,"Jiminy crickets!It's raining fish-hooks and hammer handles!

[On dishonesty:] If there were a cry of 'stop thief!' we would all stand still.

No rich man can walk through the eye of a needle.

These happy golden years are passing by, these happy golden years.

Tact does for life just what lubricating oil does for machinery.

In these days when we feed those who are not hungry, we are stealing from those who are starving, even though the food is our own.

We'd never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.

If the members of a home are ill-temperered and quarrelsome, how quickly you feel it when you enter the house. You may not know just what is wrong, but you wish to make your visit short.

We must get rid of the habit of classing all women together politically and thinking of the 'woman's vote' as one and indivisible.