It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?

A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.