Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return-prepared to send beck our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, brother and sister, and wife and child and friends and never see them again,-if you have paid your debts and made your will, and settled your affairs and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.

The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting.

Trees indeed have hearts.

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray.

If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. [...] It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.