The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.

Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use.

I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.