It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to workour mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.