The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.

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.

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.

That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

He who owns little is little owned.

Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.