How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discernonly law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be necessary to state such simple truths!

I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer.

No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times.

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.

I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me tobe doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.

As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.