Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

All great enterprises are self-supporting.

In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.

On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there.

I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.

This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?