It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.