Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.

If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.

I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath.