We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.

The biggest happiness is when at the end of the year you feel better than at the beginning

It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.

The order of things should be reversed; the seventh day should be the day of toil...and the other six his Sabbath of the affections and the soul, in which to range this widerspread garden, and drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of Nature.

We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today?