Top 160 Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Courage and kindness, loyalty, truth, and helpfulness are always the same and always needed.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

Featured in: Loyalty Quotes

2. “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

3. “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

4. “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

5. “Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

6. “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

7. “Home is the nicest word there is.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

8. “Suffering passes, while love is eternal. That’s a gift that you have received from God. Don’t waste it.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

9. “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

10. “A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

11. “There’s no great loss without some small gain.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

12. “No one has ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

14. “It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

15. “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

16. “Life begins at eighty.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

17. “Remember well, and bear in mind, a constant friend is hard to find.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

18. “Many a good beginning makes a bad ending.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

19. “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

20. “The object of all education is to make folks fit to live.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

21. “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

22. “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

23. “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

24. “It does not so much matter what happens. It is what one does when it happens that really counts.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

25. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

26. “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

27. “Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner?”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

28. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

29. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

30. “We start learning the minute we’re born, Laura. And if we’re wise, we don’t stop until the Lord calls us home.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

31. “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

32. “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

33. “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

34. “Never bet your money on another man’s game.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

35. “These happy golden years are passing by, these happy golden years.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

36. “The uplift of a fearless heart will help us over barriers.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

37. “There is nothing wrong with God’s plan that man should earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

38. “All I have told is true, but it is not the whole truth.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

40. “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

41. “We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

42. “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

43. “The wilderness needs your whole attention.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

44. “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

45. “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

46. “No rich man can walk through the eye of a needle.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

47. “Once you begin being naughty, it is easier to go and on and on, and sooner or later something dreadful happens.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

48. “We’d never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

49. “The world seems a lonesome place when mother has passed away and only memories of her are left.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

50. “There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder