When Pa was at home the gun always lay across those two wooden hooks above the door. ... The gun was always loaded, and always above the door so that Pa could get it quickly and easily, any time he needed a gun.

The stream of passing years is like a river with people being carried along in the current. Some are swept along, protesting, fighting all the way, trying to swim back up the stream, longing for the shores that they have passed, clutching at anything to retard their progress, frightened by the onward rush of the strong current and in danger of being overwhelmed by the waters. Others go with the current freely, trusting themselves to the buoyancy of the water.

Many a good beginning makes a bad ending.

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

They drove a long way through the snowy woods, till they came to the town of Pepin. Mary and Laura had seen it once before, but it looked different now.

Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)

Why should we need extra time in which to enjoy ourselves? If we expect to enjoy our life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals when we can get time or when we have nothing else to do.