That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together.

This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious.

Some interests have got a footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for.

Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.