Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes

Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs.

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

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.

Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.

Truth is sensitive and jealous of the least encroachment upon its sacredness.

The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.

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

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 history of religions, of which Christianity is a transcendent element, awaits the deepest study. It requires Bibles to free from Bibles. Comparative theology is the best of studies for liberating one's mind from geographical and traditional limitations. Like travelling, it shows the globe in its varying climates and zones, its latitude and longitude of intelligence. When the races shall have learned each other's language, the significance of things to thoughts, one faith becomes universal, one brotherhood.

Cleanse the fountain if you would purify the streams.

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?

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

Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects and schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.

One's outlook is a part of his virtue.

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.

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

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

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

Easy come, easy go ... "Achieve-everything-while-doing-nothing" schemes don't work, they are just not logical

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

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

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?

Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only.

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

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

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

Concord is a classic land. The names of Emerson and Thoreau and Channing and Hawthorne are associated with the fields and forests and lakes and rivers of this township.

Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.

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

A happy childhood is the pledge of a ripe manhood.

Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression

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

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

A chaste generation would restore Paradise.

Dignity of manner always conveys a sense of reserved force.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers.

Time is one's best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence.

Plans made in the nursery Can change the course of history

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

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.

Pleasure, that immortal essence, the beauteous bead sparkling in the cup, effervesces soon and subsides.

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

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

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.

Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.

Nature is thought immersed in matter ...

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

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

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

The less of routine, the more of life.

Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks.

A good style fits like a good costume.

Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey.

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.

Travel makes all men countrymen, makes people noblemen and kings, every man tasting of liberty and dominion.

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

Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.

My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages.

A work of real merit finds favor at last.

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?

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

Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.

Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity.

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.

Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.

The less routine the more life.

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

One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's.

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

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

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.

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

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps.

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.

A candid spirit is mightier than the most persistent dogmatism.

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.

Our ideals are our better selves.

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

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

One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;
book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned.

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

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

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.

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!

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

Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.

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

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

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

None can teach admirably if not loving his task.

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