Laura Ingalls Wilder Quotes

I'm a practitioner of elegant frugality. I don't feel comfortable telling other people what to do, so I just try and lead by example.

I'm not a girl who's into home comforts and luxury.

I feel that my environment reflects my belief in the grace and art and elegance of living simply.

I paid my way through college as a carpenter and a woodworker. So I've built the house I live in and most of the furniture that's in it, and I do a lot of woodworking still.

As a child, I was always interested in building things. Instead of buying candy, I would purchase nails, which I used to construct things out of scrap wood. My mother always claimed that my spending my money on nails instead of on candy was why I was so skinny as a kid.

To grow up under really simple circumstances, and to understand that certain things were ornamental... that made an impression on me as a child and is something I use.

I'm trying to assemble materials for a different mode of life.

Security depends not so much upon how much you have, as upon how much you can do without.

Who needs a handbag? I put my money in my bra.

My mother had very humble beginnings - to put it mildly. Her dad built their home out of timber that he cut down on their land. No heat, no air-conditioning - 'no foolishness,' as he would call it.

I don't live for stuff and things, and if I had to live in a cardboard box, I would put curtains on it.

I don't feel comfortable with luxury, and I try to stay fairly normal.

It's hard now to imagine that kind of travel and the daily tasks they simply took for granted. If a wagon axle broke, you had to stop and carve a new one. To cross a river, you sometimes had to build a raft.

The older I get, the less I need. I wear the same jean shorts for the whole week. I'm not running to the store to get the latest bag.

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

I'm pretty low-maintenance.

The Hoosier way is quite simple - we work hard, and we live within our means.

I tend to kind of try to use what's in my environment to the best of my ability rather than seek out things that I don't already have.

I am most certainly not rich. But I am a man who is intrinsically lazy. And I'm more than happy to put a piece of cheese on a rice cake and call that dinner.

I was raised by my Depression-era grandma who taught me to use what you've got: Waste not, want not!

He is always a slave who cannot live on little.

We are in a very strange way going back to the mentality of the time when Americans went in covered wagons. I imagine they had a piece of cloth, and the piece of furniture they carried with them meant to be a good piece of wood, and sturdy. We're going back to that.

Let's live with that small pittance which we have; Who covets more is evermore a slave.

There's something about living in the country that I think makes you inventive, because nature is full of miracles and wonder and surprises, and if you don't have much money, you have to make things if you want things.

In my life, what I want and what I need are exactly the same. Anything in excess of needs is burdensome to me. You couldn't give me anything I don't need. I am penniless, but have difficulty remaining so. Several of my well meaning, well-to-do friends have offered me large sums of money, which I of course refused.