Amos Bronson Alcott Quotations

Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.

Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.

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

Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.

Our dreams drench us in sense, and sense steeps us again in dreams.

Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.

Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.

While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.

Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament, and this paradise is not secure until children appear to animate and complete the picture.

The less routine the more life.

Our ideals are our better selves.

Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.

Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experience

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.

Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.

Cleanse the fountain if you would purify the streams.

Many can argue - not many converse.

Health, longevity, beauty, are other names for personal purity; and temperance is the regimen for all.

Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?

Life is one, religion one, creeds are many and diverse.

Nature is thought immersed in matter. . .

Dignity of manner always conveys a sense of reserved force.

A work of real merit finds favor at last.

Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon; of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.

An age deficient in idealism has ever been one of immorality and superficial attainment, since without the sense of ideas, nobility of character becomes of rare attainment, if possible.

Whatsoever stirs the stagnant currents, setting these flowing in wholesome directions, promotes brisk spirits and productive thinking. The less of routine, the more of life.

Traveling is no fool's errand to him who carries his eyes and itinerary along with him.

Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.

As education becomes inclusive, introspective, cosmic, promoting whole populations to power and privilege, it enthrones a vast, invisible, personal rule over the common mind.

Cities with all their advantages have something hostile to liberal learning, the seductions are so subtle and accost the senses so openly on all sides.

Plans made in the nursery Can change the course of history

Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.

The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.

One's outlook is a part of his virtue.

Creeds, like other goods, pass by inheritance to descendants.

Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman.

One cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries.

If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them -- structures which neither Plato nor Archimedes had dreamed possible.

A state, a community, caring first for all its children, providing amply for their spiritual as for their temporal well-being, has organized the primitive Eden.

Children are illuminated text-books, breviaries of doctrine, living bodies of divinity, open always and inviting their elders to peruse the characters inscribed on the lovely leaves.

An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.

The passions refuse to be organized on a basis of their own; hostile to personal freedom and one another, they rush precipitately into anarchy and mob rule.

A chaste generation would restore Paradise.

Pity the mother who assumes the name without being all this implies!

Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps.

The mind is fast emancipating itself from the dominion of man and of matter. It has let loose fearful forces on the world.

In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly.

Man is a living lie--a bitter jest Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.

Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.

One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.

Sloth is the tempter that beguiles and expels from paradise.

Like birds of passage, the instincts drift the soul adventurously beyond the horizon of sensible things, as if intent on convoying it to the mother country from whence it had flown.

Opposition strengthens the manly will.

Would Shakespeare and Raleigh have done their best, would that galaxy have shone so bright in the heavens had there been no Elizabeth on the throne?

Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.

Genius has oftenest been the pariah of his time, the unhoused god whom none cared for, unnamed till they whom he first promoted, enriched and honored, found it honorable to own their benefactor.

All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps.

Action and blood now get the game. Disdain treads on the peaceful name.

Anger is the resentment of the animal, and gentle blood alone makes the gentleman.

There is virtue in country houses, in gardens and orchards, in fields, streams and groves, in rustic recreations and plain manners, that neither cities nor universities enjoy.

Many are those who can argue; few are those who can converse

Of gifts, there seems none more becoming to offer a friend than a beautiful book.

Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.

Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor.

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.

Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.

No one is promiscuous in his way of dying. A man who has decided to hang himself will never jump in front of a train.

The richest minds need not large libraries.

Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds.

Genius--the free and harmonious play of all the faculties of a human being.

Good-humor, gay spirits, are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchemy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers.

The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.

When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and young people., he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is sweetest and purest in human existence.

Inspiration must find answering inspiration.

Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.

Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.

A friendship formed in childhood, in youth,--by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood,--becomes the genius that rules the rest of life.

Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us.

Equanimity is the gem in virtue's chaplet, and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar.

Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment.

Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it.

Civilization degrades many in order to exalt the few.

A sip is the most than mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.

The best teachers don't allow their own personal views to influence their teaching.

I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.

One must espouse some pursuit, taking it kindly at heart and with enthusiasm.