I want my daughters 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.
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. Louisa May Alcott died in 1888, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1868. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don’t mind whispering to Marmee that I’d like to try all kinds.
Happy heWith such a mother! faith in womankindBeats with his blood, and trust in all things highComes easy to him, and though he trip and fallHe shall not blind his soul with clay.
You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling. You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made and unmade you then. You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship I worshipped you. In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother you have lived. In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been nursed for ages.
The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other.
Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
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