Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries.

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.

Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with humane affections, such as are associated with one's native place. She is most significant to a lover. A lover of Nature is preeminently a lover of man. If I have no friend, what is Nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant. . .

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances to our progress. Our life is frittered away by detail. I say let your affairs be as two or three, not a hundred or a thousand. And keep your accounts on your thumb nail.