Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

The surest sign of age is loneliness. While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot be old, whatever his years may number.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

Our ideals are our better selves.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

The less routine the more life.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

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

— Amos Bronson Alcott

Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its centre and ornament. Nor is there a paradise planted till the children appear in the foreground to animate and complete the picture. Without these, the world were a solitude, houses desolate, hearts nameless; there are neither perspectives, nor prospects; ourselves are not ourselves, nor were there a future for us.

— 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. You may read selections to sensible women,--if young the better.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

To what end the house, if not for conversation, kindly manners, the entertainment of friendships, and cordialities that render the house large, and the ready receptacle of hosts and guests?

— Amos Bronson Alcott

A house, like a person, invites by amiable reserves, as if it loved to be introduced in perspective and reached by courteous approaches. Let it show bashfully behind shrubberies, screen its proportions decorously in plain tints, not thrust itself rudely, like an inn, upon the street at cross-roads. A wide lawn in front, sloping to the road gracefully, gives it the stately air and courtly approach.

— Amos Bronson Alcott