He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application.

When you are starting away, leaving your more familiar fields, for a little adventure like a walk, you look at every object with a traveler's, or at least with historical, eyes; you pause on the first bridge, where an ordinary walk hardly commences, and begin to observe and moralize like a traveler. It is worth the while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if you were a traveler passing through it, commenting on your neighbors as strangers.

What is commonly called friendship is only a little more honor among rogues.

No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

We have reason to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man.

One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.