It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots.

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever soundingand resounding in the ears of men.