A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.

Voting for the right is doing nothing for it.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?

Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?

Don't get to the end of your life and realize you have never lived.

Making a logging-road in the Maine woods is called "swamping" it, and they who do the work are called "swampers." I now perceivedthe fitness of the term. This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have coöperated with art here.

They take great pride in making their dinner cost much; I take my pride in making my dinner cost so little.