There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

I delight to come to my bearings,... not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sitthoughtfully while it goes by.

The very willow-rows lopped every three years for fuel or powder, - and every sizable pine and oak, or other forest tree, cut down within the memory of man! As if individual speculators were to be allowed to export the clouds out of the sky, or the stars out of the firmament, one by one. We shall be reduced to gnaw the very crust of the earth for nutriment.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.

Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.