“He was the first, the only love her life, and in a nature like hers such passions take deep root and die-hard.”

It takes two flints to make a fire.

I often think flowers are the angels’ alphabet whereby they write on hills and fields mysterious and beautiful lessons for us to feel and learn.

I like to help women help themselves, as that is, in my opinion, the best way to settle the woman question. Whatever we can do and do well we have a right to, and I don’t think any one will deny us.

We can’t any of us do all we would like, but we can do our best for every case that comes to us, and that helps amazingly.

I want to do something splendid, Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead I think I shall write books.

Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.

Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us.

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.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

I don’t like favors; they oppress and make me fell like a slave. I’d rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent.

You are the gull, Jo, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow.

Where the heart is the mind works best.

In the books I read the sinners are always more interesting than the saints, and in real life good people are dismally dull. I’ve no desire to be wicked, but I do want to be happy. A short life and a gay one for me and I’m willing to pay for my pleasure if it is necessary.

I’d rather take coffee than compliments now.

My friends joke that I’m dead until I get onstage. I’m dead right now as you’re speaking to me.

Love is like a brick. You can build a house, or you can sink a dead body.

Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?

I don’t want to be a star, merely dying.

Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.

When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets.

Coroner’s inquest: death by drowning. And he hasn’t been to the seashore in ten years.

Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy, useless light behind the terror, deathless song in the house of night.