Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Amos Bronson Alcott (American Teacher)

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) was an American educator, reformer, and Transcendentalist. He promoted radical reforms in education, including racial integration in the classroom. He was also the father of the American novelist Louisa May Alcott.

Born near Wolcott, Connecticut, Alcott started as a peddler and became an itinerant teacher. A New England Transcendentalist group member, he opened an unorthodox school in Boston and a vegetarian co-operative farming community (called Fruitlands,) both of which failed.

A brilliant teacher and educationist, Alcott published books on the principles of education. He was eventually appointed Superintendent of Schools in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1859, where he created the first parent-teacher association. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women’s rights.

Consistently poor or in debt, Alcott worked as a handyman or lived on the bounty of others. The family fortunes were saved by the success of his daughter’s Little Women (1868,) and in 1879, he established the Concord Summer School of Philosophy and Literature.

Odell Shepard selected and edited The Journals of Bronson Alcott (1938.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Amos Bronson Alcott

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvest reaps.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Gardening

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
Topics: Reading

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Quotations

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Inspiration

Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Friendship, Friends

Sympathy wanting, all is wanting.—Personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Sympathy

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
Topics: Eyes

If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken, we moderns are building houses for them.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ideas

Thought means life, since those who do not think do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Thoughts, Thinking, Thought

Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Misfortune, Life

Our ideals are our better selves.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ideals, Idealism

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Teaching, Teachers, Learning, Education

Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.
—Amos Bronson Alcott

While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Age, Time, Aging

Nor is a day lived, if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Morning

Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Family, Mother, Mothers

The surest sign of age is loneliness.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Aging, Age

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
Topics: Nature

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Conversation, One liners

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

A man defines his standing at the court of chastity, by his views of women.—He cannot be any man’s friend, nor his own, if not hers.
—Amos Bronson Alcott

The travelled mind is the catholic mind, educated out of exclusiveness and egotism.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Travel

The less of routine, the more of life.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Order

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
Topics: Virtue, Country

The less routine the more life.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Life, Living

We do not 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 the mantle of fair minds.—None are truly great without this ornament.
—Amos Bronson Alcott

When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and to young people, he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from what is sweetest and purest in human existence.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Age

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

Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Perception, Education

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Books, Expectations, Reading

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