Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

Any sincere thought is irresistible.

It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.

We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.