What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.

Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat.

Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.

The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased.

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?

I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.