I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?

The researcher is more memorable than the researched.

Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.

Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civilized off the face of the earth," - our forests, not to hold the king's game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself also, the lord of creation, - not for idle sport or food, but for inspiration and our own true re-creation?

On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.