That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.

In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.