Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.

The line treats “success” not as a mere outcome but as an experience whose value is intensified by time and adversity. Alcott suggests that delay, struggle, and even defeat are not incidental costs but ingredients that deepen the eventual sweetness of achievement—because they test commitment, refine character, and make the final result feel earned rather than accidental. The quotation also carries a Transcendentalist moral emphasis: inner growth and steadfastness matter as much as external victory. In this view, hardship becomes a kind of spiritual apprenticeship, and the pleasure of success is inseparable from the story of endurance that precedes it.