You must not count much upon what I can do or learn in New York.... Everything there disappoints me but the crowd; rather, I was disappointed with the rest before I came. I have no eyes for their churches, and what else they find to brag of. Though I know but little about Boston, yet what attracts me, in a quiet way, seems much meaner and more pretending than there,--libraries, pictures, and faces in the street. You don't know where any respectability inhabits.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Do you know how the naturalist learns all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? When he goes into the woods the birds fly before him and he finds none; when he goes to the river bank, the fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone. His secret is patience; he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue; he is a log.

Still we live meanly like ants, though the fable tells us we were long ago changed into men.

I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.

Good deeds are no less good because their object is unworthy.

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.