
Top 100 Louisa May Alcott Quotes
#1. The small hopes and plans and pleasures of children should be tenderly respected by grown-up people, and never rudely thwarted or ridiculed.
Louisa May Alcott
#2. Poor dull Concord. Nothing colorful has come through here since the Redcoats.
Louisa May Alcott
#3. She had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners.
Louisa May Alcott
#4. Resolved to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.
Louisa May Alcott
#5. How can girls like to have lovers and refuse them? I think it's dreadful.
Louisa May Alcott
#6. As boys going to sea immediately become nautical in speech, walk as if they already had their "sea legs" on, and shiver their timbers on all possible occasions, so I turned military at once, called my dinner my rations, saluted all new comers, and ordered a dress parade that very afternoon.
Louisa May Alcott
#7. It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and women.
Louisa May Alcott
#8. To be beautiful, accomplished, and good. To be admired, loved, and respected. To have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send. To be loved and chosen
Louisa May Alcott
#11. He looked at her an instant, for the effect of the graceful girlish figure with pale, passionate face and dark eyes full of sorrow, pride and resolution was wonderfully enhanced by the gloom of the great room, and glimpses of a gathering storm in the red autumn sky.
Louisa May Alcott
#13. The female population exceeds the male, you know, especially in New England, which accounts for the high state of culture we are in, perhaps.
Louisa May Alcott
#14. I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.
Louisa May Alcott
#15. Occasionally a matrimonial epidemic appears, especially toward spring, devastating society, thinning the ranks of bachelordom, and leaving mothers lamenting for their fairest daughters.
Louisa May Alcott
#18. I don't worry about the storms, I am learning to sail my own ship.
Louisa May Alcott
#19. Don't shut yourself up in a band box because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours.
Louisa May Alcott
#21. Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.
Louisa May Alcott
#22. There are plenty to love you so try to be satisfied with Father and Mother, Sisters and Brothers, friends and babies till the best lover of all comes to give you your reward.
Louisa May Alcott
#23. What right have I to more gay gowns, when some poor babies have none; or to spend time making myself fine, while there is so much bitter want in the world?
Louisa May Alcott
#24. 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.
Louisa May Alcott
#25. He was the first, the only love her life, and in a nature like hers such passions take deep root and die-hard.
Louisa May Alcott
#28. Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.
Louisa May Alcott
#29. Lotty would be privately dispatched with a batch of failures, which were to be concealed from all eyes in the convenient stomachs of the little Hummels.
Louisa May Alcott
#30. Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and worn by time,
Four women, taught by weal and woe
To love and labor in their prime. "
"Four sisters, parted for an hour,
None lost, one only gone before,
Made by love's immortal power,
Nearest and dearest evermore.
Louisa May Alcott
#31. ... the day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could live it over again.
Louisa May Alcott
#32. Because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man.
Louisa May Alcott
#33. it's easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when I don't feel like it. It's
Louisa May Alcott
#35. ... if men and women would only trust, understand, and help one another as my children do, what a capital place the world would be!' and Mrs. Jo's eyes grew absent, as if she was looking at a new and charming state of society in which people lived as happily and innocently as her flock at Plumfield.
Louisa May Alcott
#36. ... feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them.
Louisa May Alcott
#37. Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.
Louisa May Alcott
#38. And the good fairy said, I won't leave you money or pretty dresses but I will leave you the spirit to seek your fortune from your own efforts.
Louisa May Alcott
#39. Men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do.
Louisa May Alcott
#40. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.
Louisa May Alcott
#42. Now I am beginning to live a little and feel less like a sick oyster at low tide.
Louisa May Alcott
#43. But what mother was ever proof against the winning wiles, the ingenious evasions, or the tranquil audacity of the miniature men and women who so early show themselves accomplished Artful Dodgers?
Louisa May Alcott
#46. November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.
"That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.
Louisa May Alcott
#48. I wish we could wash from our hearts and souls The stains of the week away, And let water and air by their magic make Ourselves as pure as they. Then on the earth there would be indeed, A glorious washing day!
Louisa May Alcott
#50. I was thinking what a curious thing love is; only a sentiment, and yet it has power to make fools of men and slaves of women.
Louisa May Alcott
#51. Don't think I have any words in which to tell the meeting of the mother and daughters.
Louisa May Alcott
#53. Young people seldom turn out as one predicts, so it is of little use to expect anything,' said Mrs. Meg with a sigh. 'If our children are good and useful men and women, we should be satisfied; yet it's very natural to wish them to be brilliant and successful.
Louisa May Alcott
#54. For love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy." "I'll try, Beth." And
Louisa May Alcott
#55. But it did her good, for those whose opinion had real value gave her the criticism which is an author's best education; and when the first soreness was over, she could laugh at her poor little book, yet believe in it still, and feel herself the wiser and stronger for the buffeting she had received.
Louisa May Alcott
#58. For they were enjoying the happy hour that seldom comes but once in any life, the magical moment which bestows youth on the old, beauty on the plain, wealth on the poor, and gives human hearts a foretaste of heaven.
Louisa May Alcott
#59. Miss Kate, though twenty, was dressed with a simplicity which American girls would do well to imitate,
Louisa May Alcott
#60. The conversations were miles beyond Jo's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms, and the only thing 'evolved from her inner consciousness' was a bad headache after it was all over.
Louisa May Alcott
#62. This love of money is the curse of American, and for the sake of it men will sell honor and honesty, till we don't know whom to trust, and it is only a genius like Agassiz who dares to say, 'I cannot waste my time in getting rich,' said Mrs. Jessie sadly.
Louisa May Alcott
#63. Go and make yourself useful, since you are too big to be ornamental.
Louisa May Alcott
#65. [She was] kept there in the sort of embrace a man gives to the dearest creature the world holds for him.
Louisa May Alcott
#66. If he is old enough to ask the question he is old enough to receive true answers. I am not putting the thoughts into his head, but helping him unfold those already there.
Louisa May Alcott
#67. ... she never had what she wanted till she had given up hoping for,' said Mrs. Meg.
Louisa May Alcott
#68. Preserve your memories, keep them well, what you forget you can never retell.
Louisa May Alcott
#69. Finish it if you choose only remember, my girl, that one may read at forty what is unsafe at twenty, and that we never can be too careful what food we give that precious yet perilous thing called imagination.
Louisa May Alcott
#70. What do girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?
Louisa May Alcott
#71. I for one don't want to be ranked among idiots, felons, and minors any longer, for I am none of them.
Louisa May Alcott
#72. No love or pity, pardon or excuse should soften the sharp pang of reparation for the guilty man.
Louisa May Alcott
#74. So she enjoyed herself heartily, and found, what isn't always the case, that her granted wish was all she had hoped.
Louisa May Alcott
#75. I'm a bashful individual, though I can't get anyone to believe it ...
Louisa May Alcott
#77. The story of his downfall is soon told; for it came, as so often happens, just when he felt unusually full of high hopes, good resolutions, and dreams of a better life.
Louisa May Alcott
#78. As she said, she was 'fond of luxury', and her chief trouble was poverty.
Louisa May Alcott
#80. Take some books and read; that's an immense help; and books are always good company if you have the right sort.
Louisa May Alcott
#81. What lady do you think prettiest?" Said Sallie.
"Margaret."
"Which do you like the best?"
"Jo, of course."
"What silly questions you ask!" and Jo gave a disdainful shrug as the rest laughed at Laurie's matter-of-fact tone
Louisa May Alcott
#82. You think so now, but there'll come a time when you will care for somebody, and you'll love him tremendously, and live and die for him. I know you will, it's your way, and I shall have to stand by and see it,
Louisa May Alcott
#84. Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow ...
Louisa May Alcott
#85. Now and then, in this workaday world, things do happen in the delightful storybook fashion, and what a comfort that is.
Louisa May Alcott
#86. laughter. "Glad to find you so merry, my girls," said a cheery
Louisa May Alcott
#88. What in the world are you going to do now, Jo? asked Meg one snowy afternoon,
Louisa May Alcott
#89. [It may be true that] men never know a pretty thing when they see it. [But men do] know a lady when they see one.
Louisa May Alcott
#90. Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.
Louisa May Alcott
#95. The joys come close upon the sorrows this time, and I rather think the changes have begun,' said Mrs March. 'In most families there comes, now and then, a year full of events; this has been such an one, but it ends well, after all.
Louisa May Alcott
#96. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous, that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream.
Louisa May Alcott
#97. People don't have fortunes left them in that style nowadays; men have to work and women to marry for money. It's a dreadfully unjust world.
Louisa May Alcott
#98. ... for it is a very solemn thing to be arrested in the midst of busy life by the possibility of the great change.
Louisa May Alcott
#100. I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!
Louisa May Alcott
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