Pity the man who has a character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is silent poor indeed.

We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.

I have not earned what I have already enjoyed.

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water isbeing warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature.

I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!