“Men are always ready to die for us, but not to make our lives worth having. Cheap sentiment and bad logic.”

“Love should not make us blind to faults, nor familiarity make us too ready to blame the shortcomings we see.”

“The youngest, aged twelve, could not conceal her disappointment, and turned away, feeling as so many of us have felt when we discover that our idols are very extraordinary men and women.”

“…I'm always ready to talk, shouldn't be a woman if I were not,' laughed Mrs. Jo…”

“Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty.”

“A lover is not worth having if he’s not in earnest.”

“Let us be elegant or die!”