The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps criminis.

As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up.

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

How many fine thoughts has every man had! How few fine thoughts are expressed!

The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.