The Long Winter Quotes
"The sky was high and quivering with heat over the shimmering prairie."
"A man works better when he’s warmed up, anyway!"
"The heat there smelled as good as an oven when bread is baking."
"God gives us a conscience and brains to know what’s right."
"The colder the winter will be, the thicker the muskrats build the walls of their houses."
"We’re not animals. We’re humans, and, like it says in the Declaration of Independence, God created us free."
"I never saw anything like it. It must have tired out in the storm winds and dropped down and struck against the haystack."
"The silence was as terrible as cold is. It was stronger than any sound. It could stop the water’s lapping and the thin, faint ringing in Laura’s ears. The silence was no sound, no movement, no thing; that was its terror."
"Out in the bright soft weather they were storing up sunshine and fresh air, in themselves, for the winter when they could not have any."
"The wild things know, somehow. Every wild creature’s got ready for a hard winter."
"Laura looked at Pa and she knew he was listening too. The silence was no sound, no movement, no thing; that was its terror."
"If she had had the wings of a bird, she, too, would have spread them and flown, fast, fast, and far away."
"I don’t need any help. The cupboard is in a different place, but Ma put all the dishes in the same places in the cupboard, so I find them just as easily as ever."
"No one knew how she dreaded meeting strangers. No one knew of the fluttering in her breast and the gone feeling in her stomach when she had to meet them."
"They must go on as long as they could, and then. . ."
"Laura thought that this must be a little bit like Heaven, where the weary are at rest."
"We’ll ROLL the O-old CHARiot aLONG, And we WON’T drag ON beHIND!"
"Laura would have known him anywhere. He was the same tall, lean, lounging wildcat from Tennessee."
"I’m aiming to go far West in the spring," he said. "This here country, it’s too settled-up for me."
"Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man’s affairs and I aimed to please ’em."
"Trust Edwards to look out for himself," Pa assured her.
"I am keeping up with you in your lessons, Laura," she said. "I do wish, if I do go to college, that you could go, too."
"We’re snug and warm, as we’ve been before without even the people and the stores," he went on.
"Then let the hurricane roar! It will the sooner be o’er. We’ll weather the blast and land at last on Canaan’s happy shore!"
"Folks manage to get along when they've got to."
"The sun was still glittering on the snow, there was no cloud in the northwest."
"Sometimes Laura did not even want to be good."
"Whatever happened, they could always have a merry Christmas."
"Don't put sugar in your tea, Pa, and you'll get the full flavor of the tea."
"The sun shone again next morning and the winds were still."
"We haven't had a train for more than a month, and we are getting along all right."
"There's only this month, then February is a short month, and March will be spring."
"Even if he was scared, he ought to do as he was told."
"That first locomotive had run full speed, head-on into that snow, its full length. It was hot with speed and steam. It melted the snow all around it and the snow-water froze solid in the frozen snow."
"Just because he couldn’t get through with shovels or snowplows, he figured he couldn’t get through at all and he quit trying."
"It takes patience and perseverance to contend with things out here in the West."
"She was old enough now to stand by him and Ma in hard times. She must not worry; she must be cheerful and help to keep up all their spirits."
"The poor man, frozen solid in a cake of ice, was a lesson against haste and pride."
"Never complain of what you have. Always remember you are fortunate to have it."
"Everything was very slow. Mary asked after a while, 'How can we stop listening to it?'"
"I haven’t got my window shoveled out since the last blow," he said. "The snow piles over that little rise to the northwest and covers me up. Keeps the place so warm I don’t need much fuel. Sod houses are the warmest there are, anyway."
"There’s women and children that haven’t had a square meal since before Christmas," Almanzo put it to him. "They’ve got to get something to eat or they’ll starve to death before spring."
"Nobody’s responsible for other folks that haven’t got enough forethought to take care of themselves."
"The one thing you’re sure of is cash in your pocket," said Almanzo.
" ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,’ " Cap said.
"We’re all here, we’re all here, Do thy-self-a no harm."
"It will neber do to gib it up so, Mr. Brown! It will neber do to gib it up so!"
"Great is the Lord and greatly to be prais-ed in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness."
"We beat old Winter at last! Here it is spring, and none of us lost or starved or frozen!"
"It’s got to quit sometime and we don’t. It can’t lick us. We won’t give up."
"Christmas dinner in May! That will be great, to feast after a winter of darn near fasting!"
"We do need some butter to go with the light bread, though," Ma said.