Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.

The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice.

The state does not demand justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice; and so do the neighborhood and the family. What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

It is the stars as not yet known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveler knows.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.