Every man should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible.

If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.

Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison.

At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.

Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.

Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.

Our taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea to his hope.