If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.

Some would find fault with the morning, if they ever got up early enough.. The fault find faults even in Paradise.

The devil finds work for idle hands.

The most alive is the wildest.

I have no time to be in a hurry.

I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.

I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees and beasts. Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life's stream.