My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against.
There should always be some flowering and maturing of the fruits of nature in the cooking process.
Everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use.
The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.
He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.
The country is an archipelago of lakes, – the lake-country of New England.
The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?
So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders.
Are not all finite beings better pleased with motions relative than absolute?
The newest is but the oldest made visible to our senses.
In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.
The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their “soil,” but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on.
If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.
Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.
It is said that some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine what a canoe may do.
The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; evenafter the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent.
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?