Top 160 Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “In the West the land was level, and there were no trees. The grass grew thick and high. 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

102. “There was only the enormous, empty prairie, with grasses blowing in waves of light and shadow across it, and the great blue sky above it, and birds flying up from it and singing with joy because the sun was rising. And on the whole enormous prairie there was no sign that any other human being had ever been there.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

103. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

104. “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

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

106. “They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

107. “Why, I guess you can,” Ma said doubtfully. She did not like to see women working in the fields. Only foreigners did that. Ma and her girls were Americans, above doing men’s work.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

108. “When a man undertakes a job, he has to stick to it till he finishes it. If.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

109. “Father always maintained that a man would do more work in twelve hours, if he had a rest and all the egg-nog he could drink, morning and afternoon.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

110. “The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves. Then.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

111. “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

112. “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

113. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

114. “Pa promised that when they came to the West, Laura should see a papoose.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

115. “The wings and the golden weather and the tang of frost in the mornings made Laura want to go somewhere. She did not know where. She wanted only to go.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

116. “You could buy a suckling pig with it, if you want to. You could raise it, and it would raise a litter of pigs, worth four, five dollars apiece. Or you can trade that half-dollar for lemonade, and drink it up. You do as you want, it’s your money.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

118. “The stars and stripes were fluttering bright against the rain, clear blue overhead, and their minds were saying the words before their ears heard them.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

120. “Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

121. “Ma had been very fashionable, before she married Pa, and a dressmaker had made her clothes.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

122. “For just one little minute she almost wished that Pa was a railroad man. There was nothing so wonderful as railroads, and railroad men were great men, able to drive the big iron engines and the fast, dangerous trains. But of course not even railroad men were bigger or better than Pa, and she did not really want him to be anything but what he was.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

123. “It’s work, son,” Father said. “That’s what money is; it’s hard work.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

124. “Almanzo couldn’t understand how Father knew that he wasn’t looking at the preacher, if Father was looking at the preacher himself. But Father always did know.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

125. “For winter was coming.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

126. “Down a long road through the woods a little boy trudged to school, with his big brother Royal and his two sisters, Eliza Jane and Alice. Royal was thirteen years old, Eliza Jane was twelve, and Alice was ten. Almanzo was the youngest of all, and this was his first going-to-school, because he was not quite nine years old.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

127. “This year the teacher was a slim, pale young man. His name was Mr. Corse. He was gentle and patient, and never whipped little boys because they forgot how to spell a word. Almanzo.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

128. “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

129. “One day in the woods he met an Indian. They stood in the wet, cold woods and looked at each other, and they could not talk because they did not know each other’s words.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

130. “Every war is more or less a woman’s war.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

131. “Little rabbits, you know, always have games together before they go to bed.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

132. “Then Father said: “If the teacher has to thrash you again, Royal, I’ll give you a thrashing you’ll remember.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

133. “These little creatures looked soft as velvet. They had bright round eyes and crinkling noses and wee paws. They popped out of holes in the ground, and stood up to look at Mary and Laura. Their hind legs folded under their haunches, their little paws folded tight to their chests, and they looked exactly like bits of dead wood sticking out of the ground. Only their bright eyes glittered. Mary.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

134. “But it had been a wonderful day, the most wonderful day in her whole life. She thought about the beautiful lake, and the town she had seen, and the big store full of so many things. She held the pebbles carefully in her lap, and her candy heart wrapped carefully in her handkerchief until she got home and could put it away to keep always. It was too pretty to eat.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

135. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

136. “She liked the enormous sky and the winds, and the land that you couldn’t see to the end of. Everything was so free and big and splendid.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

137. “He knew you could never teach an animal anything if you struck it, or even shouted at it angrily. He must always be gentle, and quiet, and patient, even when they made mistakes. Star.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

138. “The vast prairie was dark and still. Only the wind moved stealthily through the grass, and the large, low stars hung glittering from the great sky.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

139. “Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man’s affairs and I aimed to please ’em.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

142. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

143. “I dare you to ask him,” Frank said. The other boys were listening. Almanzo put his hands in his pockets and said: “I’d just as lief ask him if I wanted to.” “Yah, you’re scared!” Frank jeered. “Double dare! Double dare!”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

144. “A good horseman always takes care of his horses before he eats or rests.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

145. “He was blowing up the bladder.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

146. “Oh, Charles!” Ma said. “What will we do?” Pa slumped down on a bench and said, “I don’t know.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

147. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

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

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

149. “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.”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder

150. “Flags were everywhere, and in the Square the band was playing “Yankee Doodle.” The fifes tooted and the flutes shrilled and the drums came in with rub-a-dub-dub. Yankee Doodle went to town, Riding on a pony, He stuck a feather in his hat And called it macaroni!”

— Laura Ingalls Wilder