Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.

The world so quickly adjusts itself after any loss, that the return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even the circle most interested, into confusion.

Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

The thing generally raised on city land is taxes.

One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot but feel regret that 20 or 30 years of life may have been spent without the least knowledge of him.

Hoeing in the garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are not obligated to, is nearly equal to the delight of going trouting.