There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.

A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession," for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.

Good as is discourse, silence is better and shames it.

Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.

Isolation must precede true society.