Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there were not a divine fire kindled at the same time to warm your spirit?

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.

Here or nowhere is our heaven.

Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.

Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.

I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.