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

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?

The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone.There was but the sun and the eye from the first. The ages have not added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other.

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.

How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?

Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.

The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.