Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes

109 Sourced Quotes

A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women.

Amos Bronson Alcott
A candid spirit is mightier than the most persistent dogmatism.

Amos Bronson Alcott
The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.

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When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and young people, he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is sweetest and purest in human existence.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects and schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Where there is a mother in the house, matters speed well.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Our favorites are few: since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Our bravest lessons are not learned through success, but misadventure.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.

Amos Bronson Alcott
A government for protecting the coarser interests of the body, business and bread only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption to decay.

Amos Bronson Alcott
A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers.

Amos Bronson Alcott
If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them — structures which neither Plato nor Archimedes had dreamed possible.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Travel makes all men countrymen, makes people noblemen and kings, every man tasting of liberty and dominion.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Enduring fame is ever posthumous. The orbs of virtue and genius seldom culminate during their terrestrial periods. Slow is the growth of great names, slow the procession of excellence into arts, institutions, life. Ages alone reflect their fulness of lustre. The great not only unseal, but create the organs by which they are to be seen. Neither Socrates nor Jesus is yet visible to the world.

Amos Bronson Alcott
Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only.

Amos Bronson Alcott
In the theocracy of the soul majorities do not rule. God and the saints; against them the rabble of sinners, with clamorous voices and uplifted hand, striving to silence the oracle of the private heart. Beelzebub marshals majorities. Prophets and reformers are alway special enemies of his and his minions. Multitudes ever lie. Every age is a Judas, and betrays its Messiahs into the hands of the multitude. The voice of the private, not popular heart, is alone authentic.

Amos Bronson Alcott
In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly.

Amos Bronson Alcott
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