So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements"; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting a compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.