It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.

If thousands are thrown out of employment, it suggests that they were not well employed. Why don't they take the hint? It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is incredibly beautiful, too fair to be remembered. I have had thoughts about it, but they are among the most fleeting and irrecoverable in my experience.

It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter.

I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.

The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.