- For free diagnostic lesson: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-trial-class.html
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html
Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com
Best known today as the father of novelist Louisa May Alcott, Amos Bronson Alcott was a passionate educator, abolitionist, and advocate for women's rights in mid-19th century New England. Though ridiculed by some of his contemporaries (Thomas Carlyle described him as "a venerable Don Quixote . . . all bent on saving the world by a return to acorns"), he was admired by Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E. Channing. Bronson was a founder of Fruitlands (a short-lived experiment in community living near Harvard) and the Concord School of Philosophy and Literature.
"Exercise" is one of the longer "fragments" in Alcott's essay collectionTable-Talk, originally published in 1877.
"Exercise" is one of the longer "fragments" in Alcott's essay collectionTable-Talk, originally published in 1877.
Exercise
by A. Bronson Alcott
Plato called him a cripple who, cultivating his mind, suffered his body to languish through inactivity and sloth. So Dryden--
"The wise, for care, on exercise depend,
God never made his work for man to mend."Change of scene most of all for quickening the wits: a frequent sharpening of these upon the atmosphere--the full inspiration of mountain and river, sun and shade, sky pictures all around. What is thus imbibed, pulse by pulse, sense by sense, from day to day, season by season, not spoken nor suspected at the moment, shall sometime pour its affluence from the pen or lip, sparkling with the lustrous flood of imagery to delight every one. Then a plunge into the stream to stir one's blood of a morning and send it bounding and brilliant to the brain for precipitating ideas.* Wonderful the stimulus, and as wonderful the sloth that withholds the exertion: the demon of indecision being as indomitable a rider of its victim as precipitancy, and riddance from either were alike desirable. "Expel sluggishness from your actions; opportunity is the chief good in every thing." Each moment offers the full cup. Drink, drink deep, drink it off while you may! All is in the flowing moment.The brimming bowl if once you spill,
Time's longest term shall not refill.Live a day once and render all days following immortal thereafter."Live employed, and so live free From all fetters, like to me."Whose tasks delight him cancels melancholy, ennui; day by day he enacts the commandments anew. Whatsoever stirs the stagnant currents, setting these flowing in wholesome directions, promotes brisk spirits and productive thinking. The less of routine, the more of life."The mind's
A sparkle of heavenly fire, that feeds
On action and employment, needs
No time for rest; for when it thinks to please
Itself with idleness, 't is least at ease."
*"Those who desire to pass through life with health and spirits," says Agatheus, "should bathe frequently in cold water. I can scarcely find words to express the benefit which one receives from this practice; and even in extreme old age, cold bathing, to such as have been habituated to it, will render the body firm, will strengthen the appetite, preserve the senses entire, and, in a word, will give vigor to the whole animal economy."
Source: http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/Exercise-By-A-Bronson-Alcott.htm
by A. Bronson Alcott
Plato called him a cripple who, cultivating his mind, suffered his body to languish through inactivity and sloth. So Dryden--
"The wise, for care, on exercise depend,
God never made his work for man to mend."Change of scene most of all for quickening the wits: a frequent sharpening of these upon the atmosphere--the full inspiration of mountain and river, sun and shade, sky pictures all around. What is thus imbibed, pulse by pulse, sense by sense, from day to day, season by season, not spoken nor suspected at the moment, shall sometime pour its affluence from the pen or lip, sparkling with the lustrous flood of imagery to delight every one. Then a plunge into the stream to stir one's blood of a morning and send it bounding and brilliant to the brain for precipitating ideas.* Wonderful the stimulus, and as wonderful the sloth that withholds the exertion: the demon of indecision being as indomitable a rider of its victim as precipitancy, and riddance from either were alike desirable. "Expel sluggishness from your actions; opportunity is the chief good in every thing." Each moment offers the full cup. Drink, drink deep, drink it off while you may! All is in the flowing moment.The brimming bowl if once you spill,
Time's longest term shall not refill.Live a day once and render all days following immortal thereafter."Live employed, and so live free From all fetters, like to me."Whose tasks delight him cancels melancholy, ennui; day by day he enacts the commandments anew. Whatsoever stirs the stagnant currents, setting these flowing in wholesome directions, promotes brisk spirits and productive thinking. The less of routine, the more of life."The mind's
A sparkle of heavenly fire, that feeds
On action and employment, needs
No time for rest; for when it thinks to please
Itself with idleness, 't is least at ease."
*"Those who desire to pass through life with health and spirits," says Agatheus, "should bathe frequently in cold water. I can scarcely find words to express the benefit which one receives from this practice; and even in extreme old age, cold bathing, to such as have been habituated to it, will render the body firm, will strengthen the appetite, preserve the senses entire, and, in a word, will give vigor to the whole animal economy."
Source: http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/Exercise-By-A-Bronson-Alcott.htm