I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.

Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.

I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.

One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.