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.

I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.

There may be something petty in a refined taste; it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.

Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.

We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between theilliterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought - with these I deal.