If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.

The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them; they are their true clothes.

The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.

I was awakened at midnight by some heavy, low-flying bird, probably a loon, flapping by close over my head, along the shore. So, turning the other side of my half-clad body to the fire, I sought slumber again.