Quotes from Laura Ingalls Wilder

Never bet your money on another man's game.

What good is time with nothing to do?

They heard the voices howling and shrieking in the wind, and the house creaking, and the snow swishing. "This will never do!" said Ma. "Let's play bean-porridge hot! Mary, you and Laura play it together, and, Carrie, you hold up your hands. We'll do it faster than Mary and Laura can!" So they all played bean-porridge hot, faster and faster until they could not say the rhymes, for laughing.

Howard Ensign had joined the Congregational church after their revival and would testify at prayer meeting every Wednesday night. It seemed to me that the things between one and God should be between him and God like loving ones mother. One didn't go around saying, 'I love my mother, she has been so good to me.' One just loved her and did things that she liked one to do.

He was blowing up the bladder.

I want the drumstick! I want the drumstick!

As she floundered on, plunging into the deep snow, she suddenly laughed aloud. Well, she thought, here I am. I dread to go on and I would not go back.

That was Laura, because she was so small.

Ma wrote them down with her little red pen that had a mother-of-pearl handle shaped like a feather. When her neat, clear writing filled the paper she turned it and filled it again crosswise. On the other side of the paper she did the same thing so that every inch of paper held all the words that it possibly could.

that path. He said he had seen it yesterday. "It's some old trail," he said. That night by the fire Laura asked again when she would see a papoose, but Pa didn't know. He said you never saw Indians unless they wanted you to see them. He had seen Indians when he was a boy in New York State, but Laura never had. She knew they were wild men with red skins, and their hatchets were called tomahawks. Pa

Cold purple shadows rose in the east, crept slowly across the prairie, then rose in heights on heights of darkness from which the stars swung low and bright.

They didn't say anything. Perhaps Mary felt sweet and good inside, but Laura didn't. When she looked at Mary she wanted to slap her. So she dared not look at Mary again.

In the bitter cold weather Pa could not be sure of finding any wild game to shoot for meat. The

He would butcher it as soon as the weather was cold enough to keep the pork frozen. Once

did hope that somehow Mary could go. "Oh, bother! I've miscounted

Wilder wrote, 'The roses scented the wind, and along the road the fresh blossoms, with their new petals and golden centers, looked up like little faces.

Ma didn't think puns were funny but couldn't help laughing at the naughty look Pa gave her when he made one.

This is what the cobbler threw at his wife.

Even Grace ran up and down the rows, screeching and waving her little sunbonnet.

They rolled till the balls were almost as tall as Almanzo; then they rolled them into a wall. They packed snow between them, and made a good fort.

I declare, Indians are getting so thick around here that I can't look up without seeing one." As she spoke she looked up, and there stood an Indian. He stood in the doorway, looking at them, and they had not heard a sound. "Goodness!" Ma gasped.

The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom.

So Pa sold the little house. He sold the cow and calf. He made hickory bows and fastened them upright to the wagon box. Ma helped him stretch white canvas over them.

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