The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.

I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.

The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.