We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood....What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the poke!

I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.

It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing.

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them.

Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.

Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.