After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though it were only the finest particles,--why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence.

What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.

My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.

But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.