Top 100 Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes
#1. 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?
Amos Bronson Alcott
#2. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#3. Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#4. 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
#7. 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
#8. Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#11. Genius
the free and harmonious play of all the faculties of a human being.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#13. A birthday is a good time to begin a new; throwing away the old habits, as you would old clothes, and never putting them again.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#14. Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#16. Equanimity is the gem in virtue's chaplet, and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. Man is a living lie
a bitter jest Upon himself
a conscious grain of sand Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#20. Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind and finds the readiest responses.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#22. As education becomes inclusive, introspective, cosmic, promoting whole populations to power and privilege, it enthrones a vast, invisible, personal rule over the common mind.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#24. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#25. Anger is the resentment of the animal, and gentle blood alone makes the gentleman.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#26. Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#28. 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
#31. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#32. 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
#34. Time is one's best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#35. All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#36. Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#37. Of gifts, there seems none more becoming to offer a friend than a beautiful book.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#39. The best teachers don't allow their own personal views to influence their teaching.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#40. Health, longevity, beauty, are other names for personal purity; and temperance is the regimen for all.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#41. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#42. The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#43. Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#44. A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#45. Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#48. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#50. The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#51. 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
#52. While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#54. Traveling is no fool's errand to him who carries his eyes and itinerary along with him.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#55. One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#58. Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#60. An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#61. Success is sweeter and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#62. Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#64. Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#67. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#68. 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
#69. I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#70. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#71. I perceive that I am neither a planter of the backwoods, pioneer, nor settler there, but an inhabitant of the Mind, and given to friendship and ideas. The ancient society, the Old England of New England, Massachusetts for me.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#72. Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects and schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#74. First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#75. Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure..
Amos Bronson Alcott
#77. Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#78. One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#79. Time ripens the substance of a life as the seasons mellow and perfect its fruits. The best apples fall latest and keep longest.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#81. We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#82. Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#83. Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#84. Travel makes all men countrymen, makes people noblemen and kings, every man tasting of liberty and dominion.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#85. Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#86. 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
#87. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#89. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#90. That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with delight and profit.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#91. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#92. 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
#93. A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#95. 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.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#96. One must espouse some pursuit, taking it kindly at heart and with enthusiasm.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#97. Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#98. A check on itself, evil subserves the economies of good, as it were a condiment to give relish to good.
Amos Bronson Alcott
#100. 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
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