Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.
I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.
Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.
A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.
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.
Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written.
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.
Who loves a garden, still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests reaps.
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.
One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's.
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.
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.
Time ripens the substance of a life as the seasons mellow and perfect its fruits. The best apples fall latest and keep longest.
Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment.
Equanimity is the gem in virtue's chaplet, and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar.
Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.
We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.
As education becomes inclusive, introspective, cosmic, promoting whole populations to power and privilege, it enthrones a vast, invisible, personal rule over the common mind.
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?
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.
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.
Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.
