Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.

We must take root; send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day.

The squeaking of the pump sounds as necessary as the music of the spheres.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south; but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be a neighbor, there is anunsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it. Let him build himself a log house with the bark on where he is, fronting IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can.