Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon.

The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.