In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.

Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, which in others are luxuries merely and in others still are entirely unknown.

Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food

If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.