Amos bronson alcott quotes

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.

Good-humor, gay spirits, are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchemy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers.

Of gifts, there seems none more becoming to offer a friend than a beautiful book.

Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experience

Man is a living lie--a bitter jest Upon himself--a conscious grain of sand Lost in a desert of unconsciousness.

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.

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

The fable runs that the gods mix our pains and pleasure in one cup, and thus mingle for us the adulterate immortality which we alone are permitted here to enjoy. Voluptuous raptures, could we prolong these at pleasure, would dissipate and dissolve us. A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.

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

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.

Anger is the resentment of the animal, and gentle blood alone makes the gentleman.

A sip is the most than mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.

Whatsoever stirs the stagnant currents, setting these flowing in wholesome directions, promotes brisk spirits and productive thinking. The less of routine, the more of life.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.

Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor.

Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.

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.

A birthday is a good time to begin a new; throwing away the old habits, as you would old clothes, and never putting them again.

Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.

Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.

Sloth is the tempter that beguiles and expels from paradise.

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.

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

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.

Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps.

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

One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's.

A happy childhood is the pledge of a ripe manhood.

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.

Time ripens the substance of a life as the seasons mellow and perfect its fruits. The best apples fall latest and keep longest.

Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written.

The eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any title-deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions.

Nor do we 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 mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.

Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs.

Genius has oftenest been the pariah of his time, the unhoused god whom none cared for, unnamed till they whom he first promoted, enriched and honored, found it honorable to own their benefactor.

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.

Life is one, religion one, creeds are many and diverse.

Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.

A friendship formed in childhood, in youth,--by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood,--becomes the genius that rules the rest of life.

Time is one's best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence.

None can teach admirably if not loving his task.

Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.

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

Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.

Your real influence is measured by your treatment of yourself.

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

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.

Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks.

Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.

No one is promiscuous in his way of dying. A man who has decided to hang himself will never jump in front of a train.

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

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

The richest minds need not large libraries.

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.

One cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries.

Dignity of manner always conveys a sense of reserved force.

Man must have some recognized stake in society and affairs to knit him lovingly to his kind, or he is wont to revenge himself for wrongs real or imagined.

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.

Children are illuminated text-books, breviaries of doctrine, living bodies of divinity, open always and inviting their elders to peruse the characters inscribed on the lovely leaves.

A work of real merit finds favor at last.

Would Shakespeare and Raleigh have done their best, would that galaxy have shone so bright in the heavens had there been no Elizabeth on the throne?

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

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

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.

Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.

Traveling is no fool's errand to him who carries his eyes and itinerary along with him.

All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.

Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements.

Despair snuffs the sun from the firmament.

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.

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.

Many are those who can argue; few are those who can converse

Creeds, like other goods, pass by inheritance to descendants.

A chaste generation would restore Paradise.

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

Opposition strengthens the manly will.

Plans made in the nursery Can change the course of history

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.

Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.

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.

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.

Modesty, that perennial flower planted instinctively in the human breast, blooms therein only as continence guards and virtue keeps.

Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity.

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

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.

Cleanse the fountain if you would purify the streams.

Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman.

Without a mythology, faith is impersonal and heartless.

One's outlook is a part of his virtue.

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.

Many can argue - not many converse.

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.

The books that charmed us in youth recall the delight ever afterwards; we are hardly persuaded there are any like them, any deserving our equal affections.

Easy come, easy go... "Achieve-everything-while-doing-nothing" schemes don't work, they are just not logical

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

Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons.

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

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

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.

One must espouse some pursuit, taking it kindly at heart and with enthusiasm.

Our ideals are our better selves.

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

Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.

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.

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

Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.

Inspiration must find answering inspiration.

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.

While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.

Nature is thought immersed in matter. . .

Who loves a garden, still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.

Civilization degrades many in order to exalt the few.

Our dreams drench us in senses, and senses steps us again in dreams.

The less routine the more life.

Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it.

As education becomes inclusive, introspective, cosmic, promoting whole populations to power and privilege, it enthrones a vast, invisible, personal rule over the common mind.

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.

Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.

Pity the mother who assumes the name without being all this implies!

The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.

Labor humanizes, exalts.

The passions refuse to be organized on a basis of their own; hostile to personal freedom and one another, they rush precipitately into anarchy and mob rule.