Amos Bronson Alcott

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

I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.

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

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

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

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.

The less routine the more life.

Debate is masculine conversation is feminine.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.

Debate is angular conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Without a mythology faith is impersonal and heartless.

All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.

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

Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.

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

None can teach admirably if not loving his task.

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

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.

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

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

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

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

Our ideals are our better selves.

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.

Opposition strengthens the manly will.

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

The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.

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

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

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

Equanimity is the gem in virtues chaplet and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar.

First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.

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.

Our dreams drench us in sense, and sense steeps us again in dreams.