Amos Bronson Alcott > Quotes

“Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott, Concord Days

“Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott, Tablets

“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“The less of routine, the more of life.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with delight and profit.”
― A. Bronson Alcott

“One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind and finds the readiest responses.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“Success is sweeter and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

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

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

“Education is that process by which thought is opened out of the soul, and, associated with outward . . . things, is reflected back upon itself, and thus made conscious of its reality and shape. It is Self-Realization. As a means, therefore, of educating the soul out of itself, and mirroring forth its ideas, the external world offers the materials. This is the dim glass in which the senses are first called to display the soul, until, aided by the keener state of imagination . . . it separates those outward types of itself from their sensual connection, in its own bright mirror recognizes again itself, as a distinctive object in space and time, but out of it in existence, and painting itself upon these, as emblems of its inner and super-sensual life which no outward thing can fully portray. . . . A language is to be instituted between [the child’s] spirit and the surrounding scene of things in which he dwells. . . . He who is seeking to know himself, should be ever seeking himself in external things, and by so doing will he be best able to find, and explore his inmost light.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength not by my weakness.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott, Table-talk

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

“The less routine the more life.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“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, Table-talk

“Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott, Table-talk

“Action and blood now get the game. Disdain treads on the peaceful name.”
― A. Bronson Alcott

“Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps.”
― Bronson Alcott

“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

“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

“I am an idea without hands.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott, The Journals of Bronson Alcott

“Truth is inclusive of all the virtues,
is older than sects or schools,
and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.”
― A. Bronson Alcott

“Consider how few persons you shall meet who are as sweet & sane as nature is. One quaffs health, courage, genius, and sanctity from that cup, and is never satiated with it.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott, The Journals of Bronson Alcott

“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.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott

“When a man’s own culture falls behind that of his time, he is conservative. When it outstrips and enables him to over-see his time, he is a reformer.”
― Amos Bronson Alcott, The Journals of Bronson Alcott