quotes from "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table", part V

[fiefoe]

• It is by little things that we know ourselves... love and hate have no more individuality in them than single waves in the ocean. .. Have you not a small store of recollections, .. if Death should cheat you out of them, you would not know yourself in eternity?
  
• We never fall in love with (one) in distinction from (others), until we can get an image of her though a pin-hole; and then we can see nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in our mental camera-obscura.
• Why should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars? The Amen! of Nature is always a flower.
• It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time.
  
• There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except at dead-low tide.
• Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. ... Making a business of (abstention) leads to emaciation of character.
• I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities.
• A scene or incident in undress often affects us more than on in full costume.
  

Anybody who went into raptures at the sight of a great elm in Rhode Island must be counted as a rum one, and I'm glad the school-mistress consented to taking the long path with him.