If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

An Englishman, methinks,--not to speak of other European nations,--habitually regards himself merely as a constituent part of theEnglish nation; he is a member of the royal regiment of Englishmen, and is proud of his company, as he has reason to be proud of it. But an American--one who has made tolerable use of his opportunities--cares, comparatively, little about such things, and is advantageously nearer to the primitive and the ultimate condition of man in these respects.

So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.

I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.

I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off.

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.