Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.

Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so; I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.