Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.

There they lived on, those New England people, farmer lives, father and grandfather and great-grandfather, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, we did not learn what. They were contented to live, since it was so contrived for them, and where their lines had fallen.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate tolay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.

Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried.

Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?