Amos Bronson Alcott
Our ideals are our better selves.Collection: Inspirational
Our dreams drench us in sense, and sense steeps us again in dreams.Collection: Dreams
Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.Collection: Experience
Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats.Collection: Success
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.Collection: Friendship
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.Collection: Men
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.Collection: Strength
We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes.Collection: Failure
Where there is a mother in the home, matters go well.Collection: Home
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.Collection: Age
A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences.Collection: Teacher
While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.Collection: Age
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response.Collection: Communication
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.Collection: Teacher
The less routine the more life.Collection: Life
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.
That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
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.
Who knows, the mind has the key to all things besides.
Thought means life, since those who do not think so do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Nature
Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experienceCollection: Ignorance
Many are those who can argue; few are those who can converseCollection: Arguing
Your real influence is measured by your treatment of yourself.Collection: Motivational
The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.Collection: Heart
Time ripens the substance of a life as the seasons mellow and perfect its fruits. The best apples fall latest and keep longest.Collection: Time
Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.Collection: Conversation
Enthusiasm is essential to the successful attainment of any high endeavor.Collection: Success
Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.Collection: Memories
Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written.Collection: Lines
Divination seems heightened and raised to its highest power in woman.Collection: Appreciation
Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.Collection: Footprint
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.Collection: Country
Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects and schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Birthday
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.Collection: Revenge
Without a mythology, faith is impersonal and heartless.Collection: Heartless
Time is one's best friend, teaching best of all the wisdom of silence.Collection: Time
Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Spiritual
Health, longevity, beauty, are other names for personal purity; and temperance is the regimen for all.Collection: Names
Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense.Collection: Book
I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.Collection: Future
Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.Collection: Civilization
Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements.Collection: Agreement