I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.

In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.

If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.

Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane and which the antidote.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Sell your clothes- keep your thoughts.