The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close.

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.