{Mrs. March to Jo} You are too much alike and too fond of freedom, not to mention hot tempers and strong wills, to get on happily together, in a relation which needs infinite patience and forbearance, as well as love.

Nothing remained but loneliness and grief.

Is it not meningitis?

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.

... for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity unless we watch and pray and never think them too trivial to be resisted.

You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernel, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart some day, and then the rough burr will fall off.

Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.