We Took to the Woods Quotes

“A house you can rebuild; a bridge you can restring; a washed-out road you can fill in. But there is nothing you can do about a tree but mourn.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“I think the difficulty with people who can't follow printed directions for knitting or anything else is that they try to understand them. They read the whole thing through and it doesn't make sense to them, so they start with a defeatist attitude.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“I don't have to point out, I'm sure, that letters received should be answered within a reasonable time- say a month; but there is such a thing as answering too promptly and writing too long a letter. It makes answering a burden to your correspondent, who will feel obligated to do at least as well as you have done, and will soon be heartily sick of the whole thing.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“You can think of a lot of things to make out of nothing, if you have to.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“In spite of all that is said, and more especially written, about the crabbed New Englander, New Englanders, like all ordinary people, are nice. Their manner of proffering a favor is sometimes on the crusty side, but that is much more often diffidence than surliness.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“A poem to repeat, either aloud or silently, will help you over a hill or on a long mile as surely as a neighbor who stops his team and gives you a lift.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“The three weapons to use against axe cuts are: (a) sense enough not to get cut, (b) a good working knowledge of how to apply a tourniquet, if the worst occurs, and (c) a philosophical attitude.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“The only way to know how much you love a thing is to see it in peril of being lost.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“A reasonable amount of danger is part of the price of living.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“The thing to do, once you know you are lost, is to find a good, safe place to build a little fire, build it, fire three shots, light a cigarette, and sit down and wait.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Christmas in the woods is so much better than Christmas on the Outside. We do exactly what we want to do about it, not what we have to do because the neighbors will think it's funny if we don't; or because of the kids, who will judge our efforts not by their own standards but by the standards set up by the parents of other kids.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Most local cooks have two ideas about what to do with food. They either fry it, or else they make chowder out of it.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“I'm a good knitter, and I'm proud of it. I see no point in being modest about things you know you do well. It doesn't indicate humility so much as hypocrisy or lack of perception.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“All ordinary people like us, everywhere, are trying to find the same things. It makes no difference whether they are New Englanders or Texans or Malayans or Finns. They all want to be left alone to conduct their own private search for a personal peace, a reasonable security, a little love, a chance to attain happiness through achievement.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“If you have a simply swell story in mind, you can forget the rules. A swell story takes care of itself.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“It's fun to take a pile of raw materials and make something out of them. The more demanding the work, the greater the satisfaction.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“We've managed to make a good marriage. This I say with all humility. It's a marriage in which there is nothing that can be hurt by the roughest usage. It's a marriage that you can let yourself go in, a marriage in which you can put your feet up and relax.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Once a thing is forgotten, it's forgotten until next time. Then you find to your surprise that a lot of things you thought were essential aren't essential at all. It's very enlightening.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“You don't have to understand directions. All you have to do is follow them; and you can follow them only one step at a time. What you need is not intelligence, but a blind faith.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“If it would help humanity or the course of the War by so much as one iota, I would gladly sit all day long and listen to eye-witness accounts of air raids and hour by hour reports on the progress made or not made along the numerous fronts. But it would't help anything, and it would keep me in a constant state of turmoil and indigestion. So we have our fifteen minute dose of everything's-going-to-hell each evening, and the rest of the day we try to forget about it. There's not very much tranquility left in the world today.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Adventure, free of actual risk, is hard to produce.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Here I dare to be myself. I don't see why it should ever be again be important to me what I wear, or whether I have read the latest book or seen the latest play, or know the newest catch word. I don't see why I should ever care again what people think of me. It seems silly now, but those things were once important. I don't see why it should ever matter to me again who does or does not invite me to her house, who does or does not speak to me, who does or does not have more money than I have. Those things used to matter, though, because I had no identity of my own. I had nothing to go by but the standards someone else had set up.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Every woman occasionally wonders what manner of man she has married. No matter how long she has been living with her husband, once in a while he presents a new face. It's the bunk about women being enigmas and men being just transparent little boys at heart. Or else I'm gullible.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“The things we fear are almost always things which needn't be feared at all. They are creatures of our imagination.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Aside from forest fire, there's nothing to be afraid of in the woods, except yourself. If you've got sense, you can keep out of trouble. If you haven't got sense, you'll get into trouble, here or anywhere else.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“I like to know what my friends are thinking and feeling. If too long a time elapses without my checking up on these things, I find that where once was a friend there is now a pleasant stranger.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“We don't have plays and music and contact with sophisticated minds, and a round of social engagements. All we have are sun and wind and rain, and space in which to move and breathe. All we have are the forests, and the calm expanses of the lakes, and time to call our own. All we have are the hunting and fishing and the swimming, and each other.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“It's very illuminating to have to make a list, which you will very possibly have occasion to use, of the things you'd save in an extremity. It reduces one's material possessions to their proper place.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Writing is hard work, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. It's hard on the eyes, the back, the fanny, the disposition and the nail polish.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods

“Discontent is only the fear of missing something. Content is the knowledge that you aren't missing anything worth-while.”
― Louise Dickinson Rich, We Took to the Woods