Laura Ingalls Wilder famous quotes

It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Sweet #Real #Simple

Life was not intended to be simply a round of work, no matter how interesting and important that work may be. A moment’s pause to watch the glory of a sunrise or a sunset is soul-satisfying, while a bird's song will set the steps to music all day long.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Song #Sunset #Long

A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Happiness #Humor #Dark

The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Good Life #Honesty #Inspirational Life

Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner?
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Character #Garden #Thinking

There's no great loss without some small gain.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Loss #Gains

The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Lying #Everyday #Way

The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Stupid #Spelling

These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Railroads #Coal #Ems

It is the simple things of life that make living worthwhile, the sweet fundamental things such as love and duty, work and rest, and living close to nature.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Sweet #Simple #Fundamentals

No one has ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Inspirational #Dream #Firsts

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Uplifting #Courage #Heart

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Sleep #Sunshine #Iron

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Christmas #Memories #Children

As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that things truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. It is not the things you have that make you happy. It is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Kindness #Long #Giving

Remember well, and bear in mind, a constant friend is hard to find.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Mind #Bears #Remember

It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our every-day duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome; besides, others are apt take us at our own valuation.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Thinking #Ideas #Dignity

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Girl #Light #Grease

Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Sunshine #Air #Beats

This earthly life is a battle,' said Ma. 'If it isn't one thing to contend with, it's another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Mind #Battle #Life Is

I believe it would be much better for everyone if children were given their start in education at home. No one understands a child as well as his mother, and children are so different that they need individual training and study. A teacher with a roomful of pupils cannot do this. At home, too, they are in their mothers care. She can keep them from learning immoral things from other children.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Mother #Teacher #Children

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 Ingalls Wilder

#Lonely #Sleep #Wind

Home is the nicest word there is.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Home

Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go and on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Naughty #Easier #Sooner Or Later

We who live in quiet places have the opportunity to become acquainted with ourselves, to think our own thoughts and live our own lives in a way that is not possible for those keeping up with the crowd.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Opportunity #Thinking #Crowds

Suffering passes, while love is eternal. That's a gift that you have received from God. Don't waste it.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Love #Love Is #Suffering

The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they're organized for.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Organization #Attention #Trouble

Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Happiness #Sympathy #Laughter

There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Home #Comfort #Dread

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Believe #Thinking #Would Be

in order to thoroughly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times ...
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Order #Absence #Enjoy

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Future #Age #Use

Let's be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day for our own family than we have to steal the purse of a stranger.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Cheerful #Brightness #Purses

Things and persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. How unconsciously we judge others by the light that is within ourselves, condemning or approving them by our own conception of right and wrong, honor and dishonor! We show by our judgment just what the light within us is.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Light #Judging #Honor

Many a good beginning makes a bad ending.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Failure #Beginnings And Endings

Wild animals would not stay in a country where there were so many people. Pa did not like to stay, either. He liked a country where the wild animals lived without being afraid.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Country #Animal #People

Life begins at eighty.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Age

The wilderness needs your whole attention.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Needs #Attention #Wilderness

I understood....that in my own life I represented a whole period of American history.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#American History #Periods #Understood

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Home #Gun #Doors

Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Loyalty #Kindness #Needed

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

#Thieves #Dishonesty #Cry

The object of all education is to make folks fit to live.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Education #Fit #Folks

All I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Truth #Literature

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Money #Men #Promise

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

#Mother #Memories #World

That which is the wonder of one age is the commonplace of the next.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Age #Next #Wonder

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Passion #Years #Long

The stream of passing years is like a river with people being carried along in the current. Some are swept along, protesting, fighting all the way, trying to swim back up the stream, longing for the shores that they have passed, clutching at anything to ***** their progress, frightened by the onward rush of the strong current and in danger of being overwhelmed by the waters. Others go with the current freely, trusting themselves to the buoyancy of the water ...
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Strong #Fighting #Rivers

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Hunger #Stealing #Hungry

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

#Crow #Needs #Pebbles

Vices are simply overworked virtues ...
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Vices #Virtue #Shortcomings

Why should we need extra time in which to enjoy ourselves? If we expect to enjoy our life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals when we can get time or when we have nothing else to do.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Happiness #Joy #Needs

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Weed #Spring #Fighting

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

#Thinking #Together #Vote

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Family #Home #Feelings

And just as a little thread of gold, running through a fabric, brightens the whole garment, so women's work at home, while only the doing of little things, like the golden gleam of sunlight runs through and brightens all the fabric of civilization.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Running #Home #Civilization

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Family #Home #House

Tact does for life just what lubricating oil does for machinery.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Oil #Doe #Machinery

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

#People #Used #Enjoy

It does not so much matter what happens. It is what one does when it happens that really counts.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Perspective #Doe #Matter

It is not the things you have that make you happy. It is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Kindness #Helping #Make You Happy

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

#Suits #Fixed

No rich man can walk through the eye of a needle.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Eye #Men #Rich

They drove a long way through the snowy woods, till they came to the town of Pepin. Mary and Laura had seen it once before, but it looked different now.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Long #Towns #Different

There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Animal #Men #Feds

The enormous lake stretched flat and smooth and white all the way to the edge of the gray sky. Wagon tracks went away across it, so far that you could not see where they went; they ended in nothing at all.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#White #Lakes #Sky

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Play #Two #Summertime

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Strong #Giving Up #Dark

Mary and Carrie and baby Grace and Ma had all had scarlet fever. The Nelsons across the creek had had it too, so there had been no one to help Pa and Laura.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Baby #Grace #Fever

Everything from the little house was in the wagon, except the beds and tables and chairs. They did not need to take these, because Pa could always make new ones.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#House #Wagons #Bed

Far worst of all, the fever had settled in Mary's eyes, and Mary was blind.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Eye #Fever #Blind

But in the east the sky was pale and through the gray woods came lanterns with wagons and horses, bringing Grandpa and Grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Cousin #Horse #Easter

A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Girl #Baby #Grandmother

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#White #House #Bows

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

#Sadness #Choices #Bears

Pa did not like a country so old and worn out that the hunting was poor. He wanted to go west. For two years he had wanted to go west and take a homestead, but Ma did not want to leave the settled country.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Country #Hunting #Years

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Spring #Years #Space

Her blue eyes were still beautiful, but they did not know what was before them, and Mary herself could never look through them again to tell Laura what she was thinking without saying a word.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Beautiful #Eye #Thinking

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

#Men #Sweat

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

#Lying #Heart #Honey

You venture into the unknown land because that is where your heart will take you. In the end, it is not what you want to do, it is something you have to do.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Change #Heart #Land

If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it's pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Hard Work #Thinking #Wind

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Autumn #Lakes #Air

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Years #Gone #Said

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.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Long #House #Cozy

These happy golden years are passing by, these happy golden years.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Years #Golden #Passing

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

#Light #Mind #Laura

As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness -- just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Grateful #Home #Heart

Never bet your money on another man's game.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Men #Games

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

#Rain #Hammers #Hook

Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell.
-- Laura Ingalls Wilder

#Jobs #Hard Work #Men