Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps.

I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.

As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.

Nature has left nothing to the mercy of man.