A new person is to me a great event, and hinders me from sleep. I have often had fine fancies about persons which have given me delicious hours; but the joy ends in the day; it yields no fruit.

The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.

When he has seen, that it is not his, nor any man's, but it is the soul which made the world, and that it is all accessible to him, he will know that he, as its minister, may rightfully hold all things subordinate and answerable to it.

If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.

What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries!

If a man knows the law, find out, though he live in a pine shanty, and resort to him. And if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the imprisoned soul in an elysium; or can paint a landscape, and convey into souls and ochres all the enchantments of Spring or Autumn; or can liberate and intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs and verses; it is certain that the secret cannot be kept; the first witness tells it to a second, and men go by fives and tens and fifties to his doors.

Things bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence.