When Jo's conservative sister Meg says she must turn up her hair now that she is a "young lady," Jo shouts, "I'm not! and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty.... I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China aster! It's bad enough to be a girl anyway, when I like boys' games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa, and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman.

Now we are expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help there is, and we scarcely anything.

I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy.

He was poor, yet always appeared to be giving something away; a stranger, yet everyone was his friend; no longer young, but as happy-hearted as a boy; plain and peculiar, yet his face looked beautiful to many.

Every house needs a grandmother in it.

...and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself.

So she doesn't call desertion, poverty, and hard work troubles? She's a brave little girl, and I shall be proud to know her.