Books are the treasured wealth of the world.

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Philanthropy is. . . greatly overrated. A pain in the gut is not sympathy for the underprivileged, but the result of eating a green apple; the philanthropist gives to ease his own pain.

If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.

Why should the hen set all day? She can lay but one egg, and besides she will not have picked up materials for a new one. Those who work much do not work hard.

Even trees do not die without a groan.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

If ever I was sure that someone was coming to help me, I should run like hell.

A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade.

By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in.