The Long Winter Quotes

“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, The Long Winter

“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, The Long Winter

“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, The Long Winter

“No rich man can walk through the eye of a needle.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“It can't beat us!" Pa said.
"Can't it, Pa?" Laura asked stupidly.
"No," said Pa. "It's got to quit sometime and we don't. It can't lick us. We won't give up."
Then 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, The Long Winter

“It was so wonderful to be there, safe at home, sheltered from the winds and the cold. Laura thought that this must be a little like heaven, where the weary are at rest.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Then the sun peeped over the edge of the prairie and the whole world glittered. Every tiniest thing glittered rosy toward the sun and pale blue toward the sky, and all along every blade of grass ran rainbow sparkles.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Laura said faintly, 'I thought God takes care of us.'

'He does,' Pa said, 'so far as we do what's right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what's right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That's the difference between us and everything else in creation.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Mr. Edwards admired the well-built, pleasant house and heartily enjoyed the good dinner. But he said he was going on West with the train when it pulled out. Pa could not persuade him to stay longer.
"I'm aiming to go far West in the spring," he said. "This here, country, it's too settled up for me. The politicians are a-swarming in already, and ma'am if'n there's any worse pest than grasshoppers it surely is politicians. Why, they'll tax the lining out'n a man's pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns..."
"Feller come along and taxed me last summer. Told me I got to put in every last thing I had. So I put in Tom and Jerry, my horses, at fifty dollars apiece, and my oxen yoke, Buck and Bright, I put in at fifty, and my cow at thirty five.
'Is that all you got?' he says. Well I told him I'd put in five children I reckoned was worth a dollar apiece.
'Is that all?' he says. 'How about your wife?' he says.
'By Mighty!' I says to him. 'She says I don't own her and I don't aim to pay no taxes on her,' I says. And I didn't.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Anybody knew that no two men were alike. You could measure cloth with a yardstick, or distance by miles, but you could not lump men together and measure them by any rule. Brains and character did not depend on anything but the man himself. Some men did not have the sense at sixty that some had at sixteen.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man's affairs and I aimed to please 'em.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“This is what the cobbler threw at his wife.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Beyond them the darkness was like a mist thickening over a flat, white world. Stars twinkled far away around part of its rim. Before him, the black storm climbed rapidly up the sky and in silence destroyed the stars.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“did hope that somehow Mary could go. “Oh, bother! I’ve miscounted”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“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.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“through”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“the old Virginia shore. So carry”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“had”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“carry”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“die.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Under the whole sky there was nothing but the white land, the snow blowing, and the wind and the cold.

He was not afraid. He knew where the town was and as long as the sun was in the sky or the moon or the stars he could not be lost. But he had a feeling colder than the wind. He felt that he was the only life on the cold earth under the cold sky; he and his horse alone in an enormous coldness.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“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, The Long Winter

“dazzling”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“the”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter