“Still we live meanly like ants.”

“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”

“We live a short period of time in this world, but we live it according to the laws of eternal life.”

“No very black melencholy can come to he who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.....”

“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.”

“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”

“I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.”