All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.

All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river.... The word is from the Latin villa, which together with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried.... Hence, too, the Latin word vilis and our vile, also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling themselves.

Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.

Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.