Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.

Things refuse to be mismanaged for long.

Truth gathers itself spotless and unhurt after all our surrenders and concealments and partisanship; never hurt by the treachery or ruin of its best defenders, whether Luther, or William Penn, or St. Paul.

How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.

A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out.

In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.