An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

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

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

But why should not the New Englander try new adventures - not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards - and raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

As the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria, they look to me now as a New-Englander.