When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,--none of the servants.

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.

The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.

If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, - you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, - I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,--a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,--to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.