Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women’s rights.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Amos Bronson Alcott
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: Thinking, Thoughts, Thought
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
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
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 work of real merit finds favor at last.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Work, Appreciation
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 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
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
Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Perception, Education
If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken, we moderns are building houses for them.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ideas
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: Education, Learning, Teaching, Teachers
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
Topics: Writing
Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Dreams
One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Quotations
Our ideals are our better selves.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Idealism, Ideals
Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: One liners, Conversation
The surest sign of age is loneliness.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Aging, Age
Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Life, Misfortune
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
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Inspiration
To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ignorance
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
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Persuasion
Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Success, Success & Failure
Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Many can argue; not many converse
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Arguments
The less of routine, the more of life.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Order
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
Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvest reaps.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Gardening
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Friendship, Friends
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Nor is a day lived, if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Morning
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
The travelled mind is the catholic mind, educated out of exclusiveness and egotism.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Travel
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Books, Reading, Expectations
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
We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Failure, Disappointment, Success & Failure, Success
Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Mother, Family, Mothers
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
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