If you’re a log cabin enthusiast, you’re in for a treat. I’ve gathered some of the most famous and inspiring quotes about log cabins for you.
These timeless words capture the essence, charm, and enduring allure of these rustic abodes. Whether you’re a log cabin owner or simply daydreaming about owning one, these quotes are sure to resonate with your love for these cozy hideaways.
Philosophical Log Cabin Quotes
There’s something about log cabin life that makes you look inward. Maybe it’s the serenity of the surroundings or the connection to nature, but log cabins have inspired plenty of philosophical quotes over the years.
Here are a few of my favorites:
1. “The quiet rhythmic monotone of the wall of logs fills one with the rustic peace of a secluded nook in the woods.” – Gustav Stickley
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2. “A man on a hiking trip through the Blue Ridge Mountains came to the top of a hill and saw, just below the crest, a small log cabin. Its aged owner was sitting in front of the door, smoking a corncob pipe, and when the traveler drew close enough he asked the old man patronizingly: ‘Lived here all your life?’ ‘Nope,’ the old mountaineer replied patiently. ‘Not yet.’” – James Keller
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3. “If you look at the Earth without architecture, it’s sometimes a little bit unpleasant. So there is this basic human need to do shelter in the broadest sense of the word, whether it’s a movie theater or a simple log cabin in the mountains. This is the core of architecture: To provide a space for human beings.” – Peter Zumthor
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4. “Only a dreamer or a fool would pick a stock at random and expect it to take off like a spaceship from its launching pad. Certainly this has happened — about as often as a dime-store clerk has become a Hollywood star or a boy born in a log cabin has been elected President of the United States — just often enough, that is, to keep alive the Great American Dream.” – Catherine Crook de Camp
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5. “Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums. It requires neither a log cabin nor a hairshirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar.” – David Shi
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6. “As Ronald Reagan demonstrated, it is still possible to progress if not from a log cabin at least from obscurity to the White House. It is also rare.” – Linda Colley
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7. “I’m more at home with my log cabins than I am in my house in Cherry Hill.” – Muhammad Ali
Symbolic Log Cabin Quotes
The log cabin has long been a symbol of something more than a humble woodland home. And that has inspired many smart folks to say some inspiring, symbolic things about log cabins:
8. “A log cabin symbolized the embrace between civilization and nature, humans literally wrapping the trees around them as they might draw on a coat and hat.” – Gene Logsdon
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9. “There are elements of intrinsic beauty in the simplification of a house built on the log cabin idea.” – Gustav Stickley
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10. “A lot of writers … sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that, that’s all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere — even in prison.” – Louis Auchincloss
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11. “In Canada, anything that’s not in the city is referred to as a cottage. Or a log cabin.” – Dolores O’Riordan
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12. “As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
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13. “The longest life is no more than a sliver of light between two boundless ribbons of dark, like the light you see through the chinks of a log cabin at sunrise.” – Jack Todd
Biographical Log Cabin Quotes
If there’s a log cabin somewhere in your personal history, it’s likely to come up when you speak or write about your life. It’s just a fact at this point, and we have a ton of biographical quotes about log cabins to prove it:
14. “I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin, with a big open fire, a record player and peace.” – Linda McCartney
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15. “There is hardly a pioneer’s hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.”– Alexis de Tocqueville
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16. “I live in a Mobile Home — I’ve never had a house, except once; I rented a log cabin.” – Don Van Vliet
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17. “Not so cold, some snow fell. I went inside the log cabin and said goodbye to Mother, she was so alike grandmother, just younger.” – Anders Zorn
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18. “I’m not gonna do the same, tired, standard ‘I was born in a log cabin’ kind of book. There’s so much more I want to do.” – Corey Taylor
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19. “But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I’m dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it’s 1980. Once I erupt, they’ll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.” – Sarah Vowell
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20. “Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out of it.” – James Truslow Adams
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21. “The gateway to freedom . ..was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I’d been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin.” – Chuck Berry
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22. “The life of Lincoln should never be passed by in silence by young or old. He touched the log cabin and it became the palace in which greatness was nurtured. He touched the forest and it became to him a church in which the purest and noblest worship of God was observed. His occupation has become associated in our minds with the integrity of the life he lived. In Lincoln there was always some quality that fastened him to the people and taught them to keep time to the music of his heart.” – David Swing
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23. “When I started out in public life there used to be a saying we’d hear from time to time, that every man who runs for public office will claim that he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. Well, my mother knew better. And she made sure I did too.” – Bill Clinton
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24. “The reason I’m here today, the reason I own a brand new Harley-Davidson motorcycle and the reason I have a big log cabin and I got cars and all kinds of stuff is because I’m a writer and writers own everything. So you learn how to write.” – Dan Aykroyd
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25. “Edward Abbey said you must brew your own beer; kick in your TV; kill your own beef; build your cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it. I already had a good start. As a teenager in rural Maine, after we came to America, I had learned hunting, fishing, and trapping in the wilderness. My Maine mentors had long ago taught me to make home brew. I owned a rifle, and I’d already built a log cabin. The rest should be easy. I thought I’d give it a shot.” – Bernd Heinrich
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26. “I like Alaska for the salmon fishing – it’s fantastic there. I usually stay in a log cabin with no one around for miles. I like to go with friends, but I’m also happy to be on my own with nature.” – Vinnie Jones
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27. “Fifteen years ago, my wife and I purchased an authentic log cabin in Maryland. Painstakingly restored since, the cabin sits on a forested bluff high above a wide river frequented by ospreys, eagles, geese, herons, and other waterfowl.” – James Luceno
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28. “My father liked doing carpentry work, construction work in the summer vacation. And so my mother designed a cabin, a log cabin, like a – it was like a Swiss chalet. I was twelve years old, and my father and I built it on a rocky point peninsula out into Lake Superior.” – John Lautner
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29. “I have always been ‘small town.’ I was born outside of Philadelphia, so we lived on a 20-acre farm and then spent two years in a log cabin on the Appalachian Trail. We lived outside of York in Red Lion, which is an amazing town. It’s perpetually 1982 in that town.” – Lizzy Hale
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30. “For the first five years of my life, I grew up in a log cabin in coastal British Columbia in a very small town, like 300 people, mostly hippies. No running water, no electricity. When I was 12, I changed my name from Dharma to Stewart. At that age, you just want to be normal.” – Stewart Butterfield
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31. “Thomas Young was born in 1731 in upstate New York. The child of impoverished Irish immigrants, he grew up in a log cabin without the benefit of a formal education. But he was an avid reader who began collecting books at a young age and eventually amassed one of the finest personal libraries in New England.” – Matthew Stewart
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32. “I wasn’t born in a log cabin, but my family moved into one as soon as they could afford it.” – Melville D. Landon
Final Thoughts
As we wrap up our journey through these memorable and inspiring log cabin quotes, I hope you can see the indelible mark log cabins have left on the hearts and minds of so many. I hope these words have ignited your passion for log cabins, inspiring you to embrace the tranquility and natural beauty they offer.
