In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other,--fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.

I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.

We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.

Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but they have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency.

Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.