Quotes from Amos Bronson Alcott

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

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.

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

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.

Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.

Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.

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.

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.

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.

Consider how few persons you shall meet who are as sweet & sane as nature is. One quaffs health, courage, genius, and sanctity from that cup, and is never satiated with it.

I am an idea without hands.

When a man's own culture falls behind that of his time, he is conservative. When it outstrips and enables him to over-see his time, he is a reformer.

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.

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.

Concord is a classic land. The names of Emerson and Thoreau and Channing and Hawthorne are associated with the fields and forests and lakes and rivers of this township.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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