I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

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

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison; but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.

Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.