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In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel.

Not childhood alone, but the young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal.

Whatsoever thwarts, or puts me out of my way, brings death into my mind.

My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you.

Come back, before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall hardly know me.

Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out,--I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends.

My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood.

Expect no healthy conclusions from me this month, reader; I can offer you only sick men's dreams.

It is Lucretian pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left behind in the world, carking and caring; like horses in a mill, drudging on in the same eternal round--and what is it all for?

The partners, and the clerks, with whom I had for so many years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, been closely associated--being suddenly removed from them--they seemed as dead to me.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive object.

A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it.

From a poor man, poor in Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue; I could see no end of my possessions; I wanted some steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in Time for me.

Independently of the rigours of attendance, I have ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere caprice) of incapacity for business.

The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations.

Besides my daylight servitude, I served over again all night in my sleep, and would awake with terrors of imaginary false entries, errors in my accounts, and the like.

Competence to age is supplementary youth; a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will

To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

The spirit of personal independence in the women of to-day is sure proof that a change has come.

To specialize any form of labor is a step up: to organize it is another step.

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

The brain of man is the social organ, the organ of communication. Through it flows the current of thought, whereby we are enabled to work together.

What we do modifies us more than what is done to us.