Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray.

All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.

Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison.

In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.

The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.