Well, if I can't be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.

We've got minds and souls as well as hearts; ambition and talents as well as beauty and accomplishments; and we want to live and learn as well as love and be loved. I'm sick of being told that is all a woman is fit for! I won't have anything to do with love until I prove that I am something beside a housekeeper and a baby-tender!

Some stories are so familiar its like going home.

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

We're twins, and so we love each other more than other people.

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

To be strong, and beautiful, and go round making music all the time. Yes, she could do that, and with a very earnest prayer Polly asked for the strength of an upright soul, the beauty of a tender heart, the power to make her life a sweet and stirring song, helpful while it lasted, remembered when it died.