The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden.

The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last.

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to suchI have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,--work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.

The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them.