Jo had learned that hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally.

To marry without love betrays as surely as to love without marriage.

A time will come when you will find that in gaining a brief joy you have lost your peace forever.

I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.

Fathers and mothers are too absorbed in business and housekeeping to study their children, and cherish that sweet and natural confidence which is a child's surest safeguard, and a parent's subtlest power.

All is fish that comes to the literary net. Goethe puts his joys and sorrows into poems, I turn my adventures into bread and butter.

But, Polly, a principle that can't bear being laughed at, frowned on, and cold-shouldered, isn't worthy of the name.