Amos Bronson Alcott quotes:

Send

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.
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.
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
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.
Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
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?
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.
We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.
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.
Equanimity is the gem in virtue's chaplet, and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar.
The less routine the more life.
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
Action and blood now get the game. Disdain treads on the peaceful name.
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written.
Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.
Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.
I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.
One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
What higher praise can we bestow on any one than to say of him that he harbors another's prejudices with a hospitality so cordial as to give him, for the time, the sympathy next best to, if indeed it be not edification in, charity itself. For what disturbs more and distracts mankind than the uncivil manners that cleave man from man?
Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.
Truth is sensitive and jealous of the least encroachment upon its sacredness.
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
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.
Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats."
Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.
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.
Plans made in the nursery Can change the course of history
The fable runs that the gods mix our pains and pleasure in one cup, and thus mingle for us the adulterate immortality which we alone are permitted here to enjoy. Voluptuous raptures, could we prolong these at pleasure, would dissipate and dissolve us. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.
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.
Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.
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.
Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine
The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.
The finer literature, indeed, is characterized by a certain suffusion of the feminine flavor, the finer, the more ideal, thought plumed with sentiment; even science loves to spring from its feet, philosophy affect the clouds to inspire and edify.
Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.
Despair snuffs the sun from the firmament.
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.
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.
Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.
Our ideals are our better selves.
Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.
Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.
Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experience
Nor do we accept, as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.
I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.
Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.
Many can argue - not many converse.
Cleanse the fountain if you would purify the streams.
Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.
A work of real merit finds favor at last.
Travel makes all men countrymen, makes people noblemen and kings, every man tasting of liberty and dominion.
There are truths that shield themselves behind veils, and are best spoken by implication. Even the sun veils himself in his own rays to blind the gaze of the too curious starer.
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?
Health, longevity, beauty, are other names for personal purity; and temperance is the regimen for all.
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.
Life is one, religion one, creeds are many and diverse.
One must espouse some pursuit, taking it kindly at heart and with enthusiasm.
The best teachers don't allow their own personal views to influence their teaching.
Ourselves are cosmic and capacious beyond conjecture, and to experience some notion of the planetary perspective is the richest income from travelling. It takes all to inform and educate all. Sallies forth from our cramped firesides into other homes, other hearts, are wonderfully wholesome and enlarging. Travel opens prospects on all sides, widens our horizon, liberates the mind from geographical and conventional limitations, from local prejudices and national, showing the globe in its differing climates, zones, and latitudes of intelligence.
Ideas first and last: yet it is not till these are formulated and utilized that the devotees of the common sense discern their value and advantages. The idealist is the capitalist on whose resources multitudes are maintained life long. Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks, thus carrying forward all human endeavors to their issues.
The books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards; we are hardly persuaded there are any like them, any deserving our equal affections.
Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity.
A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women.
Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.
One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.
Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.
Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.
Man is a living lie--a bitter jest Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.
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.
The mind is fast emancipating itself from the dominion of man and of matter. It has let loose fearful forces on the world.
Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps.
Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons.
Science has grown frightfully audacious in these days -- swift-footed, ponderous, careering over her iron ways with unslacking pace. This rampant dragon, on which I am mounted, see how he bends his once stiff neck to his rider, champing his checked bit and pawing the dust, impatient to leap around the globe. Genius is prescient, foresees its own might. Man is striving through these iron-ribbed, steam-sped hippogriffs, to recover his lost ubiquity and omnipotence, and threatens soon to grasp in his ample palm, and fix with flaming eye-ball, the elemental forces!
Without a mythology, faith is impersonal and heartless.
Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.
Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements.
Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks.
Labor humanizes, exalts.
Every sin provokes its punishment.
A good style fits like a good costume.
Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us m human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.
One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's.
Civilization degrades many in order to exalt the few.
Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs.
The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.
Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it.
Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment.
The eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any title-deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions.
Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us.
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.
Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds.
A sip is the most than mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.
Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.
Sloth is the tempter that beguiles and expels from paradise.
Time is one's best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence.
Of gifts, there seems none more becoming to offer a friend than a beautiful book.
Opposition strengthens the manly will.
Traveling is no fool's errand to him who carries his eyes and itinerary along with him.
Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps.
The richest minds need not large libraries.
Anger is the resentment of the animal, and gentle blood alone makes the gentleman.
All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.
Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor.
Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression
None can teach admirably if not loving his task.
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books.
Many are those who can argue; few are those who can converse
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.
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.
Nature is thought immersed in matter. . .
Easy come, easy go... "Achieve-everything-while-doing-nothing" schemes don't work, they are just not logical
Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman.
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.

Send