Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own.

Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self.

The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.