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.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

The bad are frequently good enough to let you see how bad they are, but the good as frequently endeavor to get between you and themselves.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most willfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact.

I think that every town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, either in one body or several, where a stick would never be cut for fuel, not for the navy, not to make wagons, but stand and decay for higher uses - a common possession for instruction and recreation.