...Meg learned to love her husband better for his poverty, because it seem to have made a man of him, giving him the strength and courage to fight his own way, and taught him a tender patience with which to bear and comfort the natural longings and failures of those he loved.

I did fail, say what you will, for Jo wouldn't love me.

I don't like favors; they oppress and make me fell like a slave. I'd rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent.

The female population exceeds the male, you know, especially in New England, which accounts for the high state of culture we are in, perhaps.

You have grown abominably lazy, and you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things, you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones.

For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life—uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all.

books have been my greatest comfort, castle-building a never-failing delight, and scribbling a very profitable amusement.