Birds never sing in caves.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.

Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discernonly law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be necessary to state such simple truths!

As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.