Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes - Page 6

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.

A sip is the most than mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.

Genius--the free and harmonious play of all the faculties of a human being.

The mind is fast emancipating itself from the dominion of man and of matter. It has let loose fearful forces on the world.

A candid spirit is mightier than the most persistent dogmatism.

A check on itself, evil subserves the economies of good, as it were a condiment to give relish to good.

Action and blood now get the game. Disdain treads on the peaceful name.

Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.

The best teachers don't allow their own personal views to influence their teaching.

Evil is retributive: every trespass slips fetters on the will, holds the soul in durance till contrition and repentance restore it to liberty.

Every sin provokes its punishment.

Cities with all their advantages have something hostile to liberal learning, the seductions are so subtle and accost the senses so openly on all sides.

Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.

The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.

My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages.

Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds.

A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers.

An age deficient in idealism has ever been one of immorality and superficial attainment, since without the sense of ideas, nobility of character becomes of rare attainment, if possible.

The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.

Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.

One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books.

Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us.

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

Science has grown frightfully audacious in these days -- swift-footed, ponderous, careering over her iron ways with unslacking pace. This rampant dragon, on which I am mounted, see how he bends his once stiff neck to his rider, champing his checked bit and pawing the dust, impatient to leap around the globe. Genius is prescient, foresees its own might. Man is striving through these iron-ribbed, steam-sped hippogriffs, to recover his lost ubiquity and omnipotence, and threatens soon to grasp in his ample palm, and fix with flaming eye-ball, the elemental forces!

What higher praise can we bestow on any one than to say of him that he harbors another's prejudices with a hospitality so cordial as to give him, for the time, the sympathy next best to, if indeed it be not edification in, charity itself. For what disturbs more and distracts mankind than the uncivil manners that cleave man from man?