I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.

Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.

We soon get through with nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy.

Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive.

The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

That government is best which governs least.

It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.