I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already.

Although this garrulity of advising is born with us, I confess that life is rather a subject of wonder, than of didactics. So muchfate, so much irresistible dictation from temperament and unknown inspiration enter into it, that we doubt we can say anything out of our own experience whereby to help each other.

All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.

The effect of the indulgence of human affection is a certain cordial exhilaration.

My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.

It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.

As long as our people quote English standards they dwarf their own proportions.