It chanced the other day that I secured a white water-lily, and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is an emblem of purity. It bursts up so pur… - Henry David Thoreau

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.

I do not see why, since America and her autumn woods have been discovered, our leaves should not compete with the precious stones in giving names to colors; and, indeed, I believe that in course of time the names of some of our trees and shrubs, as well as flowers, will get into our popular chromatic nomenclature.

We wonder superfluously when we hear of a somnambulist walking a plank securely, —we have walked a plank all our lives up to this particular string-piece where we are.