The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring.
Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home.
The body can feed the body only.
You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
What is man but a mass of thawing clay?
Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?
If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro.
I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
In my walks I would fain return to my senses.
In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.
I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them.
At present our only true names are nicknames.
I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.
I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.
I would stand upon facts.
In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.
Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.
The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.
And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt?