Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can

A real gentleman is as polite to a little girl as to a woman.

...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.

Laurie felt just then that his heart was entirely broken and the world a howling wilderness.

My definition (of a philosopher) is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.

I’m not like the rest of you; I never made any plans about what I’d do when I grew up; I never thought of being married, as you did. I couldn’t seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there. I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is leaving you all. I’m not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.

Be comforted, dear soul! There is always light behind the clouds.