...and Jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the work-a-day world again.

You don’t need scores of suitors. You need only one… if he’s the right one.

Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort that is.

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

Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art.

The violin - that most human of all instruments.

The patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to Jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof.