Thomas Carlyle on Amos Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May):

The good Alcott: with his long, lean face and figure, with his grey worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all bent on saving the world by a return to acorns and the golden age; he comes before one like a kind of venerable Don Quixote, whom nobody can even laugh at without loving.

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Alcott: “a tedious archangel.”