“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

“When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living... I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do.”

“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.”

“He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.”

“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

“My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed, which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does , for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set about some free labor.”

“Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.”