Still we live meanly like ants, though the fable tells us we were long ago changed into men.

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.

The virtue of making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before does not begin to be superhuman.

At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.

We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,--chiefly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.