Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they are themselves.

The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.

In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes.

I am a majority of one.

Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure.

The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.