“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Long Winter
“No rich man can walk through the eye of a needle.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Long Winter
“Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man's affairs and I aimed to please 'em.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Long Winter
“This time, after a moment, he called her bluff.
“Perhaps Philippa and I should be thrown together a little more. She might become attached to me if she knew me better.” Kate, brightening visibly, ignored the gleam in his eye.
“That would make her sorry for you?”
“It might. The object of any sort of clinical study deserves compassion, don’t you think?”
“Snakes don’t,” said Katherine inconsequently. “I hate snakes.”
“And yet you feed them on honey cakes and forbid them to defend themselves.”
“Defencelessness is not a noted characteristic of serpents. Anyhow, I can’t have them lying rattling about the house. It gets on the nerves.”
“It does if you handle it by rattling back.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Game of Kings
“She seemed fragile like a moonflower – destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall.”
― Juliet Marillier, quote from Wildwood Dancing
“. . . if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Quicksilver
“si una mentira se repetía con la frecuencia suficiente, hasta los que sabían que era una mentira la consideraban pronto como si fuese verdad.”
― Leon Uris, quote from Mila 18
“The only thing that mattered was that the quarter century or so he had remaining would be his life, to live out as he chose and in his own best interests. Nothing took precedence over that: not work, not friendships, not relationships with women. Those were all components of his life, and valuable ones, but they did not define it or control it. That was up to him, and him alone.”
― Ken Grimwood, quote from Replay
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