It is a merciful provision my dears, for it takes three or four women to get each man into, through, and out of the world. You are costly creatures, boys, and it is well that mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters love their duty and do it so well, or you would perish off the face of the earth,' said Mrs. Jo solemnly…

There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line. You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.

I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.

That is my opinion of tow-lines in general. Of course, there may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not. There may be tow-lines that are a credit to their profession — conscientious, respectable tow-lines — tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they are left to themselves. I say there may be such tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are. But I have not met with them.

I guess it’s like an airplane: they’re the drag and we’re the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we’re nose-heavy, too much of them and we’re tail-heavy — it’s a matter of balance.

Three Leahs to get to One Rachel.

It takes very little to bring about a woman's fall, but you have to lift the whole world in order to lift her.

It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.

. . . but I always say, one's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party.

We don’t throw more people at problems, we chop problems down until they can be carried across the finish line by teams of three

Pour prendre une décision, il faut être un nombre impair de personnes, et trois c'est déjà trop.

To tugboat was to try Minna's patience. Any time you pushed your luck, said too much, overstayed a welcome, or overestimated the usefulness of a given method or approach, you were guilty of having tugged the boat. Tugboating was most of all a dysfunction of wits and storytellers, and a universal one. Anybody who thought himself funny would likely tug a boat here or there. Knowing when a joke or verbal gambit was right at its limit, quitting before the boat had been tugged, that was art.

Come on in girls, and leave all hope behind.

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running away from them.

Men, some to business take, some to pleasure take; but every woman is at heart a rake

To work, her dumb lunge says,
is to move a certain mass
...through a certain distance,
is to pull your weight and feel
exact and equal to it.
Feel dragged upon. And buoyant.