We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, willoften peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly.

I learned to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.

It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.

Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate tolay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.