If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.

I have a room all to myself; it is nature.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries.

Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.