A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.

The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken.

Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

An individual is an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.

Chiefly the sea-shore has been the point of departure to knowledge, as to commerce. The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.