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Do your best, and be as honest, useful, and happy as your father, and I won't care about making a fortune.
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“Do your best, and be as honest, useful, and happy as your father, and I won't care about making a fortune.”

Louisa May Alcott

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Source
Jo's Boys
Date
1886
Local voice
Fictional character · Mrs Meg
Meaning

Meaning of “Do your best, and be as honest, useful,…”

The family standard is character rather than wealth: a father’s honesty, usefulness and happiness are presented as a better inheritance to imitate than fortune-making alone.

Source context

Where does it come from?

Jo's Boys, Chapter 10, Project Gutenberg #3499. The line is spoken in a family discussion about work, money and the example of a father.

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Speaker context

Why the local voice matters

Jo’s Boys, Chapter 10, “Demi Settles.” Mrs Meg says this to her son John “Demi” Brooke after he tells her about beginning work with Mr Tiber.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

FamilyHard WorkHonestyIntegrityMoneyPurpose Quotes About Direction, Duty & Meaningful WorkParentingValues
Related quotations

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Source identified
requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.
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“requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.”

Samuel Smiles · Thrift · 1875
Meaning & context

Smiles argues that social reform requires committed people and sustained effort rather than money alone, joining honesty, purpose and work in one historical reform ethic.

Source details

Thrift, Chapter XIV, “Riches and Charity,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles argues that money alone cannot reform conduct and says change from intemperance, improvidence and irreligion requires earnest purpose, self-devotion and hard work; that nineteenth-century reform context is preserved.

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the beauty of Holiness must be in labour as well as in rest.
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“the beauty of Holiness must be in labour as well as in rest.”

John Ruskin · Lectures on Art, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870 · 1870
Meaning & context

Ruskin places moral worth inside chosen labour rather than reserving holiness for worship or repose, reflecting the explicitly Christian framework of this lecture.

Source details

Lectures on Art, Lecture III, Project Gutenberg #19164. “Holiness” and the surrounding six-days/seventh-day contrast are explicitly religious.

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Source identified
Don't fret, mother. I shall soon be able to get money; I'll get a situation of some sort.
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“Don't fret, mother. I shall soon be able to get money; I'll get a situation of some sort.”

George Eliot · The Mill on the Floss · 1860
Voice: Fictional character · Tom Tulliver
Meaning & context

Tom responds to family financial collapse by trying to reassure his mother and assuming responsibility for earning, showing duty emerging under pressure.

Source details

The Mill on the Floss, Book III, Project Gutenberg #6688. Tom speaks after the Tulliver bankruptcy; the line belongs to a fictional family crisis.

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unless all this training of head and hand is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing.
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“unless all this training of head and hand is based upon high, upright character, upon a true heart, it will amount to nothing.”

Booker T. Washington · Character Building · 1902
Meaning & context

Knowledge and practical skill are not sufficient in Washington’s educational ideal unless they are joined to the character with which those abilities are used.

Source details

Character Building, “What Would Father and Mother Say?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. This is Washington’s normative theory of education and character, not a modern educational outcome study.

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Source identified
Have you been really honest with your parents, who have struggled, who have sacrificed, who have toiled for years, in ways you do not know of, in order that you might come here, and in order that you might remain here?
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“Have you been really honest with your parents, who have struggled, who have sacrificed, who have toiled for years, in ways you do not know of, in order that you might come here, and in order that you might remain here?”

Booker T. Washington · Character Building · 1902
Meaning & context

Washington asks students to measure their own effort against sacrifices made by parents, making gratitude inseparable from honest responsibility for the opportunity received.

Source details

Character Building, “Have You Done Your Best?”, Project Gutenberg #60484. The question is addressed to Tuskegee students reflecting on family sacrifice and their school work.

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