Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe.

People die of fright and live of confidence.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth for wheat andpotatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to be distilled into brandy.

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.

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

So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders.