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Who really said it

We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving

Not verifiably Louisa May Alcott — untraced Louisa May Alcott (credited, unconfirmed)
Attribution status: Disputed Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed

This inspirational line is ubiquitous on quote-aggregator sites, always credited to Louisa May Alcott, but no full-text search of her published novels, stories, letters, or journals turns up this exact wording, and no site — including ones that specialize in tracking her misattributed quotes — cites a title, chapter, or date for it.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed — copy with the correction

“We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving” — attributed to Louisa May Alcott (unverified)

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Louisa May Alcott — American novelist, author of Little Women. Theme: "We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Attributed work
None identified
Earliest documented appearance
Unknown — found only on 21st-century quote-aggregator and inspirational-quote sites
Primary-source search
Not found in Little Women, Rose in Bloom, or Alcott's short fiction

We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving, and we all have the power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing.

As it circulates on quote-aggregator sites — no publication has ever been cited for it.

Louisa May Alcott — Wikiquote

How we verified this

  • The line appears without citation on aggregator sites such as Goodreads ↗ and PassItOn ↗, credited only to “Louisa May Alcott.”
  • Full-text searches of Alcott's Project Gutenberg editions of Little Women and Rose in Bloom, and of her short story “A Christmas Dream, and How It Came to Be True,” found no matching passage.
  • Even Wikiquote's Alcott page ↗, which keeps a dedicated “Misattributed” section for her, has no entry for this line at all.
  • A literary-quote site aimed specifically at Alcott's work, Literary Ladies Guide ↗, reproduces the line but likewise supplies no source.

The exact wording's origin is untraced, so no responsible public-domain or copyright status can be assigned to it; it is not confirmed to appear in any specific dated publication by Louisa May Alcott or anyone else.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

This line is repeated across dozens of quote-aggregator sites, always credited to Louisa May Alcott, but never with a citation to an actual book, letter, or journal entry.

Incorrectly attributed to Quote-aggregator and inspirational-quote sites (BrainyQuote, Goodreads, AZQuotes, PassItOn, and others)

All display the line credited simply to “Louisa May Alcott” with no title, chapter, or date attached — the classic signature of an unsourced internet quote. See for example Goodreads ↗, AZQuotes ↗, and PassItOn ↗.

Incorrectly attributed to Wikiquote's Louisa May Alcott page

Maintains a dedicated “Misattributed” section listing other quotes wrongly credited to her, yet does not list this one at all — meaning even editors who track her misattributions have found no trace of it. See Wikiquote ↗.

Incorrectly attributed to Literary-focused quote pages (Literary Ladies Guide)

A site devoted specifically to curating and contextualizing Alcott's actual quotes still reproduces this line with no source, formatted as verse, but offers no citation either — confirming the absence extends even to careful literary-quote curators. See Literary Ladies Guide ↗.

No primary source has been found for this exact wording in any of Louisa May Alcott's novels, stories, letters, or journals; the pattern — a warm, generic sentiment stamped with a beloved author's name and spread with zero citation — matches the fabricated-quote phenomenon long documented by sites such as Quote Investigator ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

Inspirational lines like this one circulate by the thousand on quote-a-day calendars, greeting cards, and social media graphics, almost always stripped of any citation. Because Louisa May Alcott is a beloved, widely read author, her name gets attached to sentiments that merely sound like something she might have said — a phenomenon quote researchers have documented for dozens of famous writers.

In this case, extensive searching turned up no primary text at all: not in Little Women, not in Rose in Bloom, not in her short stories, and not on Wikiquote's Alcott page, which otherwise maintains a dedicated section for documented misattributions. That absence is itself telling — it suggests this line was never traced to her writing in the first place, only assumed.

No edition of Alcott's work has ever been found to contain this exact sentence — it exists only on unsourced quote sites.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The author

About Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

1832–1888 · American novelist, author of Little Women

Louisa May Alcott was a Massachusetts-born novelist best known for Little Women (1868–69) and its sequels, drawn heavily from her own family life among the Transcendentalist circle of Concord. She also wrote thrillers under a pseudonym and was an active abolitionist and suffragist. Her fame as a beloved, quotable author has made her a frequent target for quotes she never actually wrote.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

No verified primary source; earliest documented appearances are uncited entries on 21st-century inspirational-quote aggregator sites (e.g. Goodreads, BrainyQuote, AZQuotes), each crediting “Louisa May Alcott” with no title, date, or edition.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-all-have-our-own-life-to-pursue-our-own-kind-of-dream-to

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