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Abigail May Alcott

  • [On her recently widowed father's much younger wife:] My father has been very busy in conjugating the verb to love, and I assure you he declines its moods and tenses inimitably.

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • Do write a little each day, dear, if but a line, to show me how bravely you begin the battle, how patiently you wait for the rewards sure to come when the victory is nobly won.

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • letter to daughter Louisa May Alcott (1846), in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • Is not sorrow, all sorrow, selfish?

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • 1842, in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • Some flowers give out little or no odour until crushed.

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • 1842, in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • Oh! may this pen your muse inspire, / When wrapd in pure poetic fire.

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • to daughter Louisa May Alcott (1842), in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • Wherever I am, I see the yoke on women in some form or another. On some it sits easy for they are but beasts of burden. On others pride hushes them to silence; no complaint is made for they scorn pity or sympathy. On some it galls and chafes; they feel assured by every instinct of their nature that they were designed for a higher, nobler calling than to 'drag life's lengthening chain along.'

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • 1843, in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • A woman may perform the most disinterested duties. She may 'die daily' in the cause of truth and righteousness. She lives neglected, dies forgotten. But a man who never performed in his whole life one self-denying act, but who has accidental gifts of genius, is celebrated by his contemporaries, while his name and his works live on, from age to age. He is crowned with laurel, while scarce a 'stone may tell where she lies.'

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • 1843, in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()
  • Girls are taught to seem, to appear — not to be and do.

    • Abigail May Alcott,
    • 1848, in Eve LaPlante, Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother ()

Abigail May Alcott, U.S. suffragist

(1800 - 1877)

Louisa May Alcott’s mother.