No man ever learned to love God with all his heart, and his neighbour as himself, in a day.

He that would look with contempt on the pursuits of the farmer, is not worthy the name of a man.

It is the very wantonness of folly for a man to search out the frets and burdens of his calling and give his mind every day to a consideration of them. They belong to human life. They are inevitable. Brooding only gives them strength.

While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed.

The best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a farm; the best shares are plow shares; and the best banks are the fertile banks of a rural stream; the more these are broken the better dividends they pay.

God has made sleep to be a sponge by which to rub out fatigue. A man's roots are planted in night as in a soil.

A man that puts himself on the ground of moral principle, if the whole world be against him, is mightier than all of them.

The pie should be eaten "while it is yet florescent, white or creamy yellow, with the merest drip of candied juice along the edges, (as if the flavor were so good to itself that its own lips watered!) of a mild and modest warmth, the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied, the morsels of apple neither dissolved nor yet in original substance, but hanging as it were in a trance between the spirit and the flesh of applehood...then, O blessed man, favored by all the divinities! eat, give thanks, and go forth, 'in apple-pie order!'"

A man that has lost moral sense is like a man in battle with both of his legs shot off: he has nothing to stand on.