Quotes By Amos Bronson Alcott

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

Our ideals are our better selves.

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

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

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

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

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

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

The less routine the more life.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.

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

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.