Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances to our progress. Our life is frittered away by detail. I say let your affairs be as two or three, not a hundred or a thousand. And keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor - not sailed - made no voyage, carried no venture.

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by a moral one.

The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.