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Laura Ingalls Wilder
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“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.”
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“When the days begin to lengthen, / The cold begins to strengthen.”
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“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.”
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“Many a good beginning makes a bad ending.”
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“He counted all the bills over twice, and he looked exactly like a man skinning a flea for its hide and tallow.”
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“Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens.”
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“Now plums were ripening in the wild-plum thickets all along Plum Creek. Plum trees were low trees. They grow close together, with many little scraggly branches all strung with thin-skinned, juicy plums. Around them the air was sweet and sleepy, and wings hummed.”
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“It's raining fish-hooks and hammer handles!”
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“All I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth.”
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“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. Wings of geese, of brant, of ducks and pelicans and cranes and heron and swans and gulls, bearing them all away to green fields in the South.”
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“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.”
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“There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.”
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“... 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.”
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“... 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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.”
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“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. 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.”
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“People used to have time to live and enjoy themselves, but there is no time anymore for anything but work, work, work.”
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“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 retard 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 ...”
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“Vices are simply overworked virtues ...”
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“... in order to thoroughly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times ...”
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“Tact does for life just what lubricating oil does for machinery.”
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“We must get rid of the habit of classing all women together politically and thinking of the 'woman's vote' as one and indivisible.”
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“Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner?”
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“[On dishonesty:] If there were a cry of 'stop thief!' we would all stand still.”
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“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.”
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“A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.”
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“Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds.”
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“It does not so much matter what happens. It is what one does when it happens that really counts.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“That which is the wonder of one age is the commonplace of the next.”
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“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.”
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“It is necessary that we dream now and then. No one ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first.”
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“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.”
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“The world seems a lonesome place when mother has passed away and only memories of her are left.”
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“Life begins at eighty.”
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“The object of all education is to make folks fit to live.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, U.S. writer
(1867 - 1957)