All quotes

This was wealth indeed!—wealth to the heart!—a mine of pure, genial affections.

I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars,—every one lit me to a purpose or delight.

Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.

I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils.

Jane, I will be your brother—my sisters will be your sisters—without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.

I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I will be happy.

She had learned to know how comforting a smile, even from a stranger, may be.

Anyone who is kind wants to know when people have been made happy. They care for that more than for being thanked.

Throughout all that first night spent in the garret, she had felt a vague comfort in knowing that on the other side of the wall in which the rats scuffled and squeaked there was another young human creature. And during the nights that followed the sense of comfort grew.

If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--warm things, kind things, sweet things--help and comfort and laughter--and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.

Sara hugged her close and tried to laugh. There was a sort of comfort in the warmth of the plump, childish body.

Martha stayed with her until tea-time, but they sat in comfortable quiet and talked very little.

Each of them kept looking up at her comfortable rosy face, secretly curious about the delightful feeling she gave them—a sort of warm, supported feeling. It seemed as if she understood them as Dickon understood his “creatures.

He did not know how long he sat there or what was happening to him, but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he got up slowly and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft breath and wondering at himself. Something seemed to have been unbound and released in him, very quietly.

Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all.

She had been actually happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them.

I loved "Little Women" because it gave me a sense of kinship with girls and boys who could see and hear.

Those are red-letter days in our lives when we meet people who thrill us like a fine poem, people whose handshake is brimful of unspoken sympathy, and whose sweet, rich natures impart to our eager, impatient spirits a wonderful restfulness which, in its essence, is divine.

There, too, after a fit of temper, I went to find comfort and to hide my hot face in the cool leaves and grass.

Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, "There is joy in self-forgetfulness." So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness.

All the best of me belongs to her--there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not been awakened by her loving touch.

Some one took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all things else, to love me.

But afterward, when I was restored to my human heritage, Mildred and I grew into each other's hearts, so that we were content to go hand-in-hand wherever caprice led us, although she could not understand my finger language, nor I her childish prattle.

What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb in riotous gladness!

Then love came and set my soul free.