Quotes from A. Bronson Alcott

Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.

That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with delight and profit.

Action and blood now get the game. Disdain treads on the peaceful name.

I perceive that I am neither a planter of the backwoods, pioneer, nor settler there, but an inhabitant of the Mind, and given to friendship and ideas. The ancient society, the Old England of New England, Massachusetts for me.

Truth is inclusive of all the virtues, is older than sects or schools, and, like charity, more ancient than mankind.

Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.