For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.

I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.

To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.

There is a certain perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.

As we lay huddled together under the tent, which leaked considerably about the sides, with our baggage at our feet, we listened to some of the grandest thunder which I ever heard, -rapid peals, round and plump, bang, bang, bang in succession, like artillery from some fortress in the sky; and the lightning was proportionally brilliant. The Indian said, 'It must be good powder.' All for the benefit of the moose and us, echoing far over the concealed lakes.

I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me.

Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.