It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.

Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.

Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses.

Things do not change; we change.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle!

Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.