American writer & Philosopher (1799-1888)
One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Anger is the resentment of the animal, and gentle blood alone makes the gentleman.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Despair snuffs the sun from the firmament.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Ourselves are cosmic and capacious beyond conjecture, and to experience some notion of the planetary perspective is the richest income from travelling. It takes all to inform and educate all. Sallies forth from our cramped firesides into other homes, other hearts, are wonderfully wholesome and enlarging. Travel opens prospects on all sides, widens our horizon, liberates the mind from geographical and conventional limitations, from local prejudices and national, showing the globe in its differing climates, zones, and latitudes of intelligence.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Pity the mother who assumes the name without being all this implies!
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
One cannot celebrate books sufficiently. After saying his best, still something better remains to be spoken in their praise. As with friends, one finds new beauties at every interview, and would stay long in the presence of those choice companions. As with friends, he may dispense with a wide acquaintance. Few and choice. The richest minds need not large libraries.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Wherever comes man comes tragedy and comedy also.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
A full draught of oblivion is nature's elixir for restoring the body's tone and tension after being drugged with the opium of the day's delusions. Sleep holds the keys to the mysteries of divination, the laws of sanity. Sleep and dream, so fabled the wise ancients, sway the destinies of mortals. Our dreams drench us in sense, and sense steeps us again in dreams. Sleep is the sure antidote of insanity, the cure of idiocy, the giant of strengths, without whose potent anodynes every creature would run rabid, perception lapse into inanity. Only as we sleep do we survive the fever of thought or quench its flame.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
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.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Sympathy wanting, all is wanting; its personal magnetism is the conductor of the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in human communion, and gives us to company, conversation, and ourselves.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Tablets
Whoever in a state knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to rule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the first place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Tablets
Like birds of passage, the instincts drift the soul adventurously beyond the horizon of sensible things, as if intent on convoying it to the mother country from whence it had flown.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in man, and finds the readiest response.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
I find my past in my present, and from these forecast my future.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength not my weakness.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
A government for protecting the coarser interests of the body, business and bread only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption to decay.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Ideas first and last: yet it is not till these are formulated and utilized that the devotees of the common sense discern their value and advantages. The idealist is the capitalist on whose resources multitudes are maintained life long. Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks, thus carrying forward all human endeavors to their issues.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk