One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Biblewhich every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed, and which America reads. So wide is its influence.

For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indiansand hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.

Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.

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.

New earths, new themes expect us.