As I stood and watched the mists slowly rising this morning I wondered what view was more beautiful than this.

There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues.

There are no idealists in the plant world and no compassion. The rose and the morning glory know no mercy. Bindweed, the morning glory, will quickly choke its competitors to death, and the fencerow rose will just as quietly crowd out any other plant that tried to share its roothold. Idealism and mercy are human terms and human concepts.

He who travels west travels not only with the sun but with history.

There are some things, but not too many, toward which the countryman knows he must be properly respectful if he would avoid pain, sickness and injury. Nature is neither punitive nor solicitous, but she has thorns and fangs as wells as bowers and grassy banks.

To know after absence the familiar street and road and village and house is to know again the satisfaction of home.

Any river is really the summation of a whole valley. It shapes not only the land but the life and even the culture of that valley. To think of any river as nothing but water is to ignore the greater part of it.