Amos Bronson Alcott famous quotes

The less routine the more life.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Life #Life Changing #Life Is Good

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

#Fall #Government #Mind Your Own Business

Our ideals are our better selves.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Inspirational #Self

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

#Friendship #Friends #World

Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Humor #Lessons #Misadventure

Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Mom #Mother #Home

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Inspirational #Humorous #Ignorance

Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experience
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Ignorance #Stupidity #Innocence

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Inspiring #Wise #Reader

Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Dream #Steps

Many can argue - not many converse.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Communication #Arguing

A work of real merit finds favor at last.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Appreciation #Real #Favors

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Family #Children #Home

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Nature #Stars #Ocean

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Funny #Book #Reading

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Education #Teacher #Eye

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Inspirational #Success #Perseverance

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Inspiration #Men #Inspire

Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Strength #Teaching #Atheism

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Debate #Feminine #Conversation

Dignity of manner always conveys a sense of reserved force.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Dignity #Force

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Heart #Self #Mind

Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Intuition #Speak #Instinct

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

#Success #Failure #Heaven

A check on itself, evil subserves the economies of good, as it were a condiment to give relish to good.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Evil #Giving #Economy

Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Memories #Imagination #Zenith

A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Men #Views #Court

Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Ideas #Surrender #Abandonment

Life is one, religion one, creeds are many and diverse.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Life Is #Creeds #Diverse

Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Unity #Debate #Conversation

Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Conversation

Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Agreement #Differences #Conversation

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

#Country #Country Life #Born

A sip is the most than mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Delight

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Running #Pain #Fables

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

#Truth #School #Charity

A candid spirit is mightier than the most persistent dogmatism.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Spirit #Candid #Dogmatism

A chaste generation would restore Paradise.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Generations #Paradise #Chaste

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Passion #Mob Rule #Anarchy

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

#Philosophy #Orbit #Momentum

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

#Depth #Reader

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Children #Book #Character

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Spiritual #Children #Caring

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!
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Eye #Men #Dust

Without a mythology, faith is impersonal and heartless.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Heartless #Mythology

Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Giving #Shade #Dogma

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Book #Delight #Youth

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Hands #Ideas #Issues

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Home #Heart #Perspective

Man must have some recognized stake in society and affairs to knit him lovingly to his kind, or he is wont to revenge himself for wrongs real or imagined.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Revenge #Real #Men

A happy childhood is the pledge of a ripe manhood.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Childhood #Pledge #Manhood

Pity the mother who assumes the name without being all this implies!
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Mother #Names #Assuming

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

#Calendars #Virtue #Equanimity

Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Book #Experience #Failing

The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Heart #Divine

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

#Friends #Leader #Affection

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

#Government #Empires #Royal

Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Hands #Ideas #Tasks

Labor humanizes, exalts.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Labor

Every sin provokes its punishment.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Punishment #Sin #Provoking

A good style fits like a good costume.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Style #Costumes #Fit

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Sympathy #Light #Giving

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

#Doe

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?
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Men #Giving #Prejudice

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

#Travel #Kings #Men

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Truth #Rays #Veils

Truth is sensitive and jealous of the least encroachment upon its sacredness.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Truth #Jealous #Sensitive

One must espouse some pursuit, taking it kindly at heart and with enthusiasm.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Heart #Enthusiasm #Pursuit

The eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any title-deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Eye #Titles #Deeds

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Wise #Book #Reading

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Friendship #Childhood #Genius

Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Friendship #Clouds #Sun

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

#Play #Genius #Faculty

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Angel #Gay #Sight

The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Ignorance #Sound #Depth

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Children #People #May

Inspiration must find answering inspiration.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Inspiration

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

#Names #Purity #Moderation

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

#Self #Mind #Modesty

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?
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Morning #Water #Sunrise

The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Cost #Littles #Virtue

Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Agitation #Answers #Quiet

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Book #Age #Eras

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Book #Personality #Portraits

Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Women

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Inspirational #Education #Teacher

All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Struggle #Soul #Unrest

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Footprint #Prudence

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Book #Inspiration #Names

Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Expression #Study #Felicity

Cleanse the fountain if you would purify the streams.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Fountain #Streams

Time is one's best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Time #Teaching #Silence

None can teach admirably if not loving his task.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Teaching #Tasks #Teach

One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Book #Character #Lovers

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Country #Garden #Cities

Many are those who can argue; few are those who can converse
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Arguing

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Men #Decision #Dying

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.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Morning #Writing #Sleep

Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Success #Essentials #Enthusiasm

The richest minds need not large libraries.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott

#Mind #Library #Needs