It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but last fruits also.

Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.

There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.