C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Alcott
A friendship formed in childhood, in youth,—by happy accident at any stage of rising manhood,—becomes the genius that rules the rest of life.
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.
A good style fits like a good costume.
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.
“Agriculture, for an honorable and high-minded man,” says Xenophon, “is the best of all occupations and arts by which men procure the means of living.”
A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women.
A sip is the most that mortals are permitted from any goblet of delight.
Cleanse the fountain if you would purify the streams.
Conversation is an abandonment to ideas, a surrender to persons.
Debate is angular, conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity.
Debate is masculine; conversation is feminine.
Dignity of manner always conveys a sense of reserved force.
Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it.
Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.
Enthusiasm imparts itself magnetically and fuses all into one happy and harmonious unity of feeling and sentiment.
Equanimity is the gem in virtue’s chaplet, and St. Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar.
Every sin provokes its punishment.
Experience converts us to ourselves when books fail us.
Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.
First find the man in yourself if you will inspire manliness in others.
Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs.
Friendship is a plant that loves the sun, thrives ill under clouds.
Fullness is always quiet; agitation will answer for empty vessels only.
Genius—the free and harmonious play of all the faculties of a human being.
Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements.
Good-humor, gay spirits, are the liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting imps into angels by the alchemy of smiles. The satans flee at the sight of these redeemers.
Health, longevity, beauty, are other names for personal purity; and temperance is the regimen for all.
Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.
I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.
Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks.
If the ancients left us ideas, to our credit be it spoken that we moderns are building houses for them.
Inspiration must find answering inspiration.
Labor humanizes, exalts.
Life is one, religion one, creeds are many and diverse.
Madame de Staël pronounced architecture to be frozen music; so is statuary crystallized spirituality.
Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.
Many can argue, not many converse.
Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds.
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.
None can teach admirably if not loving his task.
Nor do we accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without this ornament.
Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of sunrise and the fountains of waters?
Observation more than books, experience rather than persons, are the prime educators.
One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another’s.
One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though perception is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;—book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned.
One must espouse some pursuit, taking it kindly at heart and with enthusiasm.
Opposition strengthens the manly will.
Our bravest lessons are not learned through success, but misadventure.
Our dreams drench us in sense, and sense steeps us again in dreams.
Our favorites are few: since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey.
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Our ideals are our better selves.
Our notion of the perfect society embraces the family as its center and ornament. Nor is there a paradise planted until the children appear in the foreground, to animate and complete the picture.
Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.
Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary.
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.
That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.
The eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any title-deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions.
The head best leaves to the heart what the heart alone divines.
The more one endeavors to sound the depths of his ignorance the deeper the chasm appears.
The richest minds need not large libraries.
The surest sign of age is loneliness. While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot be old, whatever his years may be.
The wisest and best are repulsive, if they are characterized by repulsive manners. Politeness is an easy virtue, costs little, and has great purchasing power.
There are truths that shield themselves behind veils, and are best spoken by implication. Even the sun veils himself in his own rays to blind the gaze of the too curious starer.
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.
Thought means life, since those who do not think do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
Travel makes all men countrymen, makes people noblemen and kings, every man tasting of liberty and dominion.
Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects and schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.
Truth is sensitive and jealous of the least encroachment upon its sacredness.
We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.
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?
When one becomes indifferent to women, to children, and young people, he may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is sweetest and purest in human existence.
Where there is a mother in the house, matters speed well.
Where women are, the better things are implied if not spoken.
Would Shakespeare and Raleigh have done their best, would that galaxy have shone so bright in the heavens had there been no Elizabeth on the throne?