Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity.

If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.

How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?

Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.

A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.

A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age.

The greater number of men are merely corporals.