The line is from Jo's poem “In the Garret” in Little Women, Part Two (1869), Chapter 46 (“Under the Umbrella”), where Professor Bhaer produces one of Jo's published verses. Alcott's text prints a comma after “worthy” — “Be worthy, love, and love will come” — which the popular one-liner drops.
“Be worthy love, and love will come” Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1869) — verified by Quotle.info
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In context
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Provenance
The source
Source
Little Women, Part Two (1869)
Verification
Confirmed in Alcott's text (poem “In the Garret”)
Found in
Jo's poem “In the Garret”, Part Two, Ch. 46, “Under the Umbrella”
Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old, A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain— “Be worthy, love, and love will come,” In the falling summer rain.
This is the closing stanza of Jo's poem “In the Garret” in Little Women. The familiar one-liner being checked here — “Be worthy love, and love will come” — is Alcott's own; her text simply prints a comma after “worthy.”
The line circulates widely as a Louisa May Alcott quote on sites like Goodreads ↗, tagged “Little Women” — and that attribution is correct.
It is a couplet from a poem, “In the Garret,” that Alcott gives to Jo in Part Two, Chapter 46 ↗ (“Under the Umbrella”), the chapter in which Professor Bhaer produces Jo's published verses.
A full-text check of the Project Gutenberg edition ↗ of Little Women finds the line verbatim in that poem: “Be worthy, love, and love will come,” in the falling summer rain.
The only difference from the popular version is punctuation: Alcott's text places a comma after “worthy,” which the tidy one-liner drops. The wording and the attribution are otherwise Alcott's own.
The line is from Little Women, Part Two (1869). As a pre-1931 U.S. publication, that text — and this line with it — is firmly in the public domain.
Fact-check
The attribution holds up
This one is the real thing: a genuine line from Little Women, not an invented “inspirational” quote. The only thing worth flagging is a stray comma.
✕
Incorrectly attributed to Quote-aggregator sites (Goodreads, AZQuotes, QuoteFancy, and similar)
Incorrectly attributed to The one small variant: punctuation
Alcott's text reads “Be worthy, love, and love will come,” with a comma after “worthy”; the popular one-liner simply drops it. The words themselves are unchanged.
✓The line is genuine Alcott — from Jo's poem “In the Garret” in Little Women ↗, Part Two (1869), Chapter 46.
Context
Why it mattered
For over 150 years, Little Women has supplied readers with genuine lines about love, ambition, and self-worth. This is one of them: a couplet from a poem Alcott gives to Jo, the aspiring writer, in the chapter where Professor Bhaer finally reads her published verses.
This particular line has circulated for years on quote-collection sites, attached to Alcott and to Little Women — and the attribution checks out. A search of the novel's full text turns it up verbatim in the poem “In the Garret,” differing from the popular version only by a comma.
Jo's own verse, tucked into a garret poem — quoted ever since, almost to the comma.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1832–1888 · American novelist, author of Little Women
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist best known for Little Women (1868–69), a semi-autobiographical story of the four March sisters that became one of the most enduring works of American children's literature. She wrote extensively about self-improvement, work, and family life, and filled the novel with quotable lines about love and self-worth — including the verse this page traces.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. Part Two. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869. Chapter 46, “Under the Umbrella,” poem “In the Garret.”
MLA (9th ed.)
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. Part Two, Roberts Brothers, 1869.
APA (7th ed.)
Alcott, L. M. (1869). Little women (Part two). Roberts Brothers.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be worthy love, and love will come’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-worthy-love-and-love-will-come