Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are.

We bless and curse ourselves.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration.

The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.

The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones.