A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

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

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.

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