You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

I cannot but regard it as a kindness in those who have the steering of me that, by the want of pecuniary wealth, I have been nailed dawn to this my native region so long and steadily, and made to study and love this spot of earth more and more. What would signify in comparison a thin and diffused love and knowledge of the whole earth instead, got by wandering? The traveler's is but a barren and comfortless condition. Wealth will not buy a man a home in nature-house nor farm there. The man of business does not by his business earn a residence in nature, but is denaturalized rather.