...the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.

Right Jo better be happy old maids than unhappy wives or unmaidenly girls running about to find husbands.

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.

Men are often bad, but babies never are.

It is never too early to try and plant [good principles] in a child, and never too late to cultivate them in the most neglected person.

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

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.