Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

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.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth.