Top 500 Louisa May Alcott Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Mr. Laurence. I have got a letter for the lady.”

— Louisa May Alcott

252. “Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

— Louisa May Alcott

253. “Long, quiet days she spent, not lonely of idle, for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends, and she was by nature a busy bee.”

— Louisa May Alcott

254. “Amy, though the youngest, was a most important person, in her own opinion at least.”

— Louisa May Alcott

255. “One of the sweet things about pain and sorrow is that they show us how well we are loved, how much kindness there is in the world, and how easily we can make others happy in the same way when they need help and sympathy.”

— Louisa May Alcott

256. “There are things that mothers can manage best when they do their duty.”

— Louisa May Alcott

257. “Because, dear, I don’t think you suited to one another. As friends you are very happy, and your frequent quarrels soon blow over, but I fear you would both rebel if you were mated for life. 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.”

— Louisa May Alcott

258. “Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle. “Don’t, Jo. It’s so boyish!” “That’s why I do it.”

— Louisa May Alcott

259. “Hope can comfort love, and faith makes resignation possible.”

— Louisa May Alcott

260. “He was poor, yet always appeared to be giving something away; a stranger, yet everyone was his friend; no longer young, but as happy-hearted as a boy; plain and peculiar, yet his face looked beautiful to many.”

— Louisa May Alcott

261. “By gentle words and silent acts of kindness, he had won her reverence and her trust, which now had deepened into woman’s truest, purest love.”

— Louisa May Alcott

262. “You can go through the world with your elbows out and your nose in the air, and call it independence, if you like. That’s not my way.”

— Louisa May Alcott

263. “Men are often bad, but babies never are.”

— Louisa May Alcott

264. “It dawned upon her gradually that the world was being picked to pieces, and put together on new and, according to the talkers, on infinitely better principles than before, that religion was in a fair way to be reasoned into nothingness, and intellect was to be the only God.”

— Louisa May Alcott

265. “The dim, dusty room, with the busts staring down from the tall bookcases, the cosy chairs, the globes and, best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wader where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.”

— Louisa May Alcott

266. “Sympathy is a sweet thing.”

— Louisa May Alcott

267. “Mothers can forgive anything!”

— Louisa May Alcott

268. “Oh, Mother, help me, do help me!”

— Louisa May Alcott

269. “Poor Jo tried desperately to be good, but her bosom enemy was always ready to flame up and defeat her, and it took years of patient effort to subdue it.”

— Louisa May Alcott

270. “That is a good book it seems to me, which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.”

— Louisa May Alcott

271. “Love scenes, if genuine, are indescribable; for to those who have enacted them, the most elaborate description seems tame, and to those who have not, the simplest picture seems overdone. So romancers had better let imagination paint for them that which is above all art, and leave their lovers to themselves during the happiest minutes of their lives.”

— Louisa May Alcott

272. “To most the end comes as naturally and simply as sleep.”

— Louisa May Alcott

273. “All the worse for the undeniable talent which hides the evil so subtly and makes the danger so delightful.”

— Louisa May Alcott

274. “If rank and money come with love and virtue, also, I should accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune, but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures.”

— Louisa May Alcott

275. “This is just the time, Meg, when young married people are apt to grow apart, and the very time when they ought to be most together, for the first tenderness soon wears off, unless care is taken to preserve it. And no time is so beautiful and precious to parents as the first years of the little lives given to them to train.”

— Louisa May Alcott

276. “Christie loved books; and the attic next her own was full of them. To this store she found her way by a sort of instinct as sure as that which leads a fly to a honey-pot, and, finding many novels, she read her fill. This amusement lightened many heavy hours, peopled the silent house with troops of friends, and, for a time, was the joy of her life.”

— Louisa May Alcott

277. “I do like men who come out frankly and own that they are not gods.”

— Louisa May Alcott

278. “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

279. “Love is apt to make lunatics of even men and saints.”

— Louisa May Alcott

280. “It’s not half so sensible to leave legacies when one dies as it is to use the money wisely while alive, and enjoy making one’s fellow creatures happy with it.”

— Louisa May Alcott

281. “The thought that, insignificant as she was, she yet might do some good, made her very careful of her acts and words, and so anxious to keep head contented and face happy, that she forgot her clothes, and made others do the same. She did not know it, but that good old fashion of simplicity made the plain gowns pretty, and the grace of unconsciousness beautified their little wearer with the charm that makes girlhood sweetest to those who truly love and reverence it.”

— Louisa May Alcott

282. “Keep bobbing, and we’ll come right by and by.”

— Louisa May Alcott

283. “I don’t want a religion that I put away with my Sunday clothes, and don’t take out till the day comes around again; I want something to see and feel and live day by day.”

— Louisa May Alcott

284. “Life is a fight, and I like a good soldier.”

— Louisa May Alcott

285. “A time will come when you will find that in gaining a brief joy you have lost your peace forever.”

— Louisa May Alcott

286. “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

287. “Being a domestic man, John decidedly missed the wifely attentions he had been accustomed to receive, but as he adored his babies, he cheerfully relinquished his comfort for a time, supposing with masculine ignorance that peace would soon be restored.”

— Louisa May Alcott

288. “For the wise old man was universally beloved, and ministered so beautifully to his flock that many of them thanked him all their lives for the help given to both hearts and souls.”

— Louisa May Alcott

289. “Gentlemen, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color.”

— Louisa May Alcott

290. “I’ll behave like a Turveydrop see.”

— Louisa May Alcott

291. “No, Mother, it is better as it is, and I’m glad Amy has learned to love him. But you are right in one thing. I am lonely, and perhaps if Teddy had tried again, I might have said ‘Yes,’ not because I love him any more, but because I care more to be loved than when he went away.”

— Louisa May Alcott

292. “Please could I say one word?” was the question three times repeated before a rough head boobed out from the grotto of books in which Mac usually sat. “Did anyone speak?” he asked, blinking in teh flood of sunshine that entered with Rose. “Only three times, thank you. Don’t disturb yourself, I beg; for I merely want to say a word,” answered Rose.”

— Louisa May Alcott

293. “Polly shut her door hard, and felt ready to cry with vexation that her pleasure should be spoilt by such a silly idea, for, of all the silly freaks of this fast age, that of little people playing at love is about the silliest. Polly had been taught that it was a very serious and sacred thing, and, according to her notions, it was far more improper to flirt with one boy than to coast with a dozen.”

— Louisa May Alcott

294. “If every one agreed, we should never get on.”

— Louisa May Alcott

295. “Here’s Meg married and a mamma, Amy flourishing away at Paris, and Beth in love. I’m the only one that has sense enough to keep out of mischief.”

— Louisa May Alcott

296. “Jo’s ambition was to do something very splendid; what it was she had no idea as yet, but left it for time to tell her; and, meanwhile, found her greatest affliction in the fact that she couldn’t read, run, and ride as much as she liked. A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic.”

— Louisa May Alcott

297. “Now we are expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help there is, and we scarcely anything.”

— Louisa May Alcott

298. “The right string had been touched, and even French exercises and piano practice became endurable, since accomplishments would be useful by and by; dress, manners, and habits were all interesting now, because ‘mind and body, heart and soul, must be cultivated’, and while training to become an ‘intelligent, graceful, healthy girl’, little Josie was unconsciously fitting herself to play her part well on whatever stage the great Manager might prepare for her.”

— Louisa May Alcott

299. “It isn’t fair that I should have the hardest work, and never any amusement. Men are very selfish, even the best of them.”

— Louisa May Alcott

300. “Virtue was its own reward.”

— Louisa May Alcott