What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,--for there must be subordination,--but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare.

Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.

A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.

There may be something petty in a refined taste; it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.

A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

Probably if our lives were more conformed to nature, we should not need to defend ourselves against her heats and colds, but findher our constant nurse and friend, as do plants and quadrupeds.