When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and to young people, he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from what is sweetest and purest in human existence.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
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
To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ignorance
Nor is a day lived, if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Morning
Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Dreams
While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Time, Age, Aging
Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
A work of real merit finds favor at last.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Appreciation, Work
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Inspiration
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
Many can argue; not many converse.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Arguments
Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Mothers, Family, Mother
Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Education, Perception
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
The travelled mind is the catholic mind, educated out of exclusiveness and egotism.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Travel
If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken, we moderns are building houses for them.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ideas
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Friendship, Friends
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Reading, Expectations, Books
Our ideals are our better selves.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ideals, Idealism
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
Topics: Family
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, Education, Learning, Teachers
We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Success, Disappointment, Failure, Success & Failure
Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Misfortune, Life
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
The surest sign of age is loneliness.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Aging, Age
The less routine the more life.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Life, Living
A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Government
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Persuasion
The less of routine, the more of life.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Order
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Henry David Thoreau American Philosopher
- John Ciardi American Poet
- Joseph Goldstein American Meditation Teacher
- Sivaya Subramuniyaswami American Hindu Teacher
- Ram Dass American Hindu New Age Pioneer
- Robert Henri American Painter
- Swami Chinmayananda Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher
- Ralph Waldo Emerson American Philosopher
- Lama Thubten Yeshe Tibetan Buddhist Lama
- Taisen Deshimaru Japanese Zen Master
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