The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit; is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.

Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.

Wherever men have lived, there is a story to be told

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.

When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but last fruits also.