Amos Bronson Alcott Quotes

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

I see myself as a witness to humanity.

O, would some Power give us, To see ourselves as others see us!

You know so much about me and yet you don't understand me. To know is not to understand. We could know everything and still not understand anything.

You can't tell what a man is like or what he is thinking when you are looking at him. You must get around behind him and see what he has been looking at.

The eye observes only what the mind, the heart, and the imagination are gifted to see; and sight must be reinforced by insight before souls can be discerned as well as manners, ideas as well as objects, realities and relations as well as appearances and accidental connections.

Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see.

Time and reflection change the sight little by little 'till we come to understand.

Nobody has ever been able to experience what they have thoroughly understood - or understand what they have experienced until they have achieved a detachment that renders them incapable of repeating the experience.

It was easier to know a character's point of view than it was to figure out what your point of view was.

I have discovered nothing new; I have only perceived what I already knew.

To think is not always to see.

I think perception is important.

Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.

I observe the world and the people surrounding me.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.

Our understanding is correlative to our perception.

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes anothers.

Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.

If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That's what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we're having.

You rehear your life by reading about what happens to other people.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

If you would judge, understand.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world.