The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, - tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it.

I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.

All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.