The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

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 order of things should be reversed; the seventh day should be the day of toil...and the other six his Sabbath of the affections and the soul, in which to range this widerspread garden, and drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of Nature.

I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.

Treat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.