There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.

We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.

There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.

If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.