The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.

Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.

The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.

We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.

The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.

We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.