Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.

Indeed, the Englishman's history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most of life.... How to extract its honey from the flower of the world.

A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.