Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes

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

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

The less routine the more life.

Our ideals are our better selves.

Many are those who can argue; few are those who can converse

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.

Ignorance is innocence - stupidity comes with experience

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

Your real influence is measured by your treatment of yourself.

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

Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.

The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.

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

Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.

Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written.

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

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

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.

I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.

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.

Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements.

Health, longevity, beauty, are other names for personal purity; and temperance is the regimen for all.

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

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

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