“I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod froma haddock. Generous as it seems, this condition would empty most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the fishers of men were fishermen.”

“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”

“It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.”

“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”

“But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.”

“Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves.”

“Our life is not so much threatened as our perception. Ghostlike we glide through nature, and should not know our place again.”

“The eye of prudence may never shut.”

“There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.”

“It sometimes occurs that memory has a personality of its own and volunteers or refuses its information at its will, not at mine.”

“Thought dissolves the material universe by carrying the mind up into a sphere where all is plastic.”

“The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going”

“You can't hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have”

“Effort is the key, but direction and loyalty are paramount.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“Come, Lady, die to live.”

“To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub.”

“Be merry; you have cause, so have we all, of joy; for our escape is much beyond our loss . . . . then wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.”

“No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.”

“Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.”