The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.

Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.