Quotes from Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is Indian country, isn't it?" Laura said. "What did we come to their country for, if you don't like them?

There is good in everything, if only we look for it.

Golden years are passing by, Happy, happy golden years, Passing on the wings of time, These happy golden years. Call them back as they go by, Sweet their memories are, Oh, improve then as they fly, These happy golden years.

Nothing anywhere could be better than being at home with the home folks, she was sure.

Mothers always fuss about the way you eat. You can hardly eat any way that pleases them.

The snug log house looked just as it always had. It did not seem to know they were going away.

You can fill a glass full to the brim with milk, and fill another glass of the same size brim full of popcorn, and then you can put all the popcorn kernel by kernel into the milk, and the milk will not run over. You cannot do this with bread. Popcorn and milk are the only two things that will go into the same place.

There was no time to lose, no time to waste in rest or play. The life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime.

Maybe everything comes out all right, if you keep on trying. Anyway, you have to keep on trying; nothing will come out right if you don't.

That's the noise that made the Redcoats run! Mr. Paddock said to Father. Maybe, Father said, tugging his beard. But it was muskets that won the Revolution. And don't forget it was axes and plows that made this country. That's so, come to think of it, Mr. Paddock said.

Mary and Laura clung tight to their rag dolls and did not say anything. The cousins stood around and looked at them. Grandma and all the aunts hugged and kissed them and hugged and kissed them again, saying good-by.

The candle-light was dim, as though the darkness were trying to put it out.

She was glad that the cosy 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.

I declare, you eat more plums than you pick up," Mary said. "I don't either any such a thing," Laura contradicted. "I pick up every plum I eat.

Mary was too scared to move. Laura was too scared to stand still.

Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn't Susan's fault that she was only a corncob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn't see.

Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man's affairs and I aimed to please 'em.

For dinner they ate the stewed pumpkin with their bread. They made it into pretty shapes on their plates. It was a beautiful color, and smoothed and molded so prettily with their knives. Ma never allowed them to play with their food at table; they must always eat nicely everything that was set before them, leaving nothing on their plates. But she did let them make the rich, brown, stewed pumpkin into pretty shapes before they ate it.

When gloomy clouds across the sky Cast shadows o'er the land, Bright rays of hope illumine my path, For Jesus holds my hand.

Anybody knew that no two men were alike. You could measure cloth with a yardstick, or distance by miles, but you could not lump men together and measure them by any rule. Brains and character did not depend on anything but the man himself. Some men did not have the sense at sixty that some had at sixteen.

The last time always seems sad, but it isn't really. The end of one thing is only the beginning of another.

So they all went away from the little log house. The shutters were over the windows, so the little house could not see them go. It stayed there inside the log fence, behind the two big oak trees that in the summertime had made green roofs for Mary and Laura to play under. And that was the last of the little house

Cattle did not have to be led to water. They came eagerly to the trough and drank while Almanzo pumped, then they hurried back to the warm barns, and each went to its own place. Each cow turned into her own stall and put her head between her own stanchions. They never made a mistake. Whether this was because they had more sense than horses, or because they had so little sense that they did everything by habit, Father did not know.

For winter was coming. The days were shorter, and frost crawled up the window panes at night. Soon the snow would come. Then the log house would be almost buried in snowdrifts, and the lake and the stream would freeze.