Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes

109 Sourced Quotes

One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.

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

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

Amos Bronson Alcott
There are truths that shield themselves behind veils, and are best spoken by implication. Even the sun veils himself in his own rays to blind the gaze of the too curious starer.

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

Amos Bronson Alcott
The finer literature, indeed, is characterized by a certain suffusion of the feminine flavor, the finer, the more ideal, thought plumed with sentiment; even science loves to spring from its feet, philosophy affect the clouds to inspire and edify.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Health, longevity, beauty, are other names for personal purity; and temperance is the regimen for all.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Sloth is the tempter that beguiles and expels from paradise.

Amos Bronson Alcott
An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Truth is sensitive and jealous of the least encroachment upon its sacredness.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.

Amos Bronson Alcott
What higher praise can we bestow on any one than to say of him that he harbors another's prejudices with a hospitality so cordial as to give him, for the time, the sympathy next best to, if indeed it be not edification in, charity itself. For what disturbs more and distracts mankind than the uncivil manners that cleave man from man?

Amos Bronson Alcott
Pleasure, that immortal essence, the beauteous bead sparkling in the cup, effervesces soon and subsides.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Madame de Staël pronounced architecture to be frozen music; so is statuary crystallized spirituality.

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
Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Cities with all their advantages have something hostile to liberal learning, the seductions are so subtle and accost the senses so openly on all sides.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Believe, youth, despite all temptations, the oracle of deity in your own bosom. 'Tis the breath of God's revelations,—the respiration of the Holy Ghost in your breast. Be faithful, not infidel, to its intuitions,—quench never its spirit,—dwell ever in its omniscience. So shall your soul be filled with light, and God be an indwelling fact,—a presence in the depths of your being.

Amos Bronson Alcott
A state, a community, caring first for all its children, providing amply for their spiritual as for their temporal well-being, has organized the primitive Eden.

Amos Bronson Alcott
The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.

Amos Bronson Alcott
The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.

Amos Bronson Alcott
The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Like birds of passage, the instincts drift the soul adventurously beyond the horizon of sensible things, as if intent on convoying it to the mother country from whence it had flown.

Amos Bronson Alcott