If there was any petting to be done...he chose to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented.

The principal value of a garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessors vegetables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues - hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation.

Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to any satisfactory haven.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method.

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

There is life in the ground; it goes into the seeds and also when it is stirred up goes into the man who stirs it.

It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will ever kill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training on the part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated, unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; and the rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to be to catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm. No sportsman however, will use anything but the fly, except when he happens to be alone.