I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources.

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.

He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.

Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler.

Being is the great explainer.

Whether we live by the seaside, or by the lakes and rivers, or on the prarie, it concerns us to attend to the nature of fishes, since they are not phenomena confined to certain localities only, but forms and phases of the life in nature universally dispersed. The countless shoals which annually coast the shores of Europe and America are not so interesting to the student of nature as the more fertile law itselffrom which it results that they may be found in water in so many places, in greater or lesser numbers.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.