I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface ofthings. We think that that is which appears to be.

Slow are the beginnings of philosophy.

This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious.

The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.

We perceive that the schemers return again and again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of history.

It is a great art to saunter !

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.