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
The travelled mind is the catholic mind, educated out of exclusiveness and egotism.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Travel
Many can argue; not many converse
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Arguments
Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Perception, Education
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Inspiration
While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Aging, Time, Age
If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken, we moderns are building houses for them.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ideas
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
I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Country
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Friendship, Friends
Nor is a day lived, if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Morning
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
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 less of routine, the more of life.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Order
A work of real merit finds favor at last.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Appreciation, Work
Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Conversation, One liners
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
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, Success, Success & Failure, Disappointment
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
One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Quotations
The surest sign of age is loneliness.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Age, Aging
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Expectations, Books, Reading
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Ignorance
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
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, Teachers, Teaching, Learning
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Persuasion
Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
Topics: Misfortune, Life
Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.
—Amos Bronson Alcott
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