In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?

So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it.

The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.