If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.

The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.

I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.

Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity.

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.