Quotes from Laura Ingalls Wilder

They were cosy and comfortable in their little house made of logs, with the snow drifted around it and the wind crying because it could not get in by the fire.

The stars and stripes were fluttering bright against the rain, clear blue overhead, and their minds were saying the words before their ears heard them.

Snow as fine and grainy as sugar covered the windows in and sifted off to the floor and did not melt.

That machine's a great invention! he said. Other folks can stick to old-fashioned ways if they want to, but I'm all for progress. It's a great age we're living in. As long as I raise wheat, I'm going to have a machine come and thresh it, if there's one anywhere in the neighborhood.

Laura said faintly, 'I thought God takes care of us.' 'He does,' Pa said, 'so far as we do what's right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what's right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That's the difference between us and everything else in creation.

She had not known before that it takes two to make a smile.

Then the sun peeped over the edge of the prairie and the whole world glittered. Every tiniest thing glittered rosy toward the sun and pale blue toward the sky, and all along every blade of grass ran rainbow sparkles.

It was muskets that won the Revolution. And don't forget it was axes, and plows that made this country.- Father Wilder

So to the end when life's dim shadows fall,                  Love will be found the sweetest song of all.

Where's my little half-pint of sweet cider half drunk up?

All day the storm lasted. The windows were white and the wind never stopped howling and screaming. It was pleasant in the warm house. Laura and Mary did their lessons, then Pa played the fiddle while Ma rocked and knitted, and bean soup simmered on the stove. All night the storm lasted, and all the next day. Fire-light danced out of the stove's draught, and Pa told stories and played the fiddle.

He knew you could never teach an animal anything if you struck it, or even shouted at it angrily. He must always be gentle, and quiet, and patient, even when they made mistakes. Star

Pa took her hand and comforted it in his big one. He said, "We must do the best we can, Laura, and not grumble. What must be done is best done cheerfully.

Where a light can't live, I know I can't.

It's work, son, Father said. That's what money is; it's hard work.

God hates a coward. I don't actually believe this is true. But it's something to aim for.

Roma tidaklah dibangun dalam waktu sehari. Begitu juga sebuah jalan kereta api. Atau hal-hal lain yang menyenangkan dalam hidup ini. - Charles Ingalls

I declare to goodness, I don't know but sometimes I believe in women's rights. If women were voting and making laws, I believe they'd have better sense. (Mrs. McKee to Laura, regarding homesteading laws)

Ma had been very fashionable, before she married Pa, and a dressmaker had made her clothes.

Laura knew then that she was not a little girl any more. Now she was alone; she must take care of herself. When you must do that, then you do it and you are grown up. Laura was not very big, but she was almost thirteen years old, and no one was there to depend on. Pa and Jack had gone, and Ma needed help to take care of Mary and the little girls, and somehow to get them all safely to the west on a train.

Almanzo! What's the matter? Be you sick? It's five o'clock!

You could buy a suckling pig with it, if you want to. You could raise it, and it would raise a litter of pigs, worth four, five dollars apiece. Or you can trade that half-dollar for lemonade, and drink it up. You do as you want, it's your money.

A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you're a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come. You'll be free and independent, son, on a farm.

Then the fire was shining on the hearth, the cold and the dark and the wild beasts were all shut out, and Jack the brindle bulldog and Black Susan the cat lay blinking at the flames in the fireplace. Ma sat in her rocking chair, sewing by the light