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.

The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder, - and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.

Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

Once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,--and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.

It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.

What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow than you see.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.