Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.

What is man but a mass of thawing clay?

One can hardly imagine a more healthful employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the observation of nature.

There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.