A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning.

The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.