We'd never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.

This earthly life is a battle,' said Ma. 'If it isn't one thing to contend with, it's another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures.

We must get rid of the habit of classing all women together politically and thinking of the 'woman's vote' as one and indivisible.

A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.

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.

Far worst of all, the fever had settled in Mary's eyes, and Mary was blind.

In order to thoroughly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times.