We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Some suggestions for you :

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

All perception of truth is the detection of analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.

Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had any thing to say. Tell the tailors, said he, to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch. His companion's prayer is forgotten.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

We might climb a tree, at least.

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

You conquer fate by thought.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.

Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it...At last we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think.

Men think that it is essential that the "Nation" have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, wether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain.

I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;—but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.