The seeds of the life of fishes are everywhere disseminated, whether the winds waft them, or the waters float them, or the deep earth holds them; wherever a pond is dug, straightway it is stocked with this vivacious race. They have a lease of nature, and it is not yet out.

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray.

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.