You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.

When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters.

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

We never conceive the greatness of our fates.

The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.