Thou art to me a delicious torment.

The exceptional life depends not on working harder, but on different, even opposite, actions from habit and the crowd.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.

Our prejudices are our robbers, they rob us valuable things in life. People only see what they are prepared to see.

Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used.

When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.