In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.

When the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

Today...the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without intervention of winter, if Nature would let them.

There is no treatment for adore, but to love far more.

There is only one path to Heaven. On Earth, we call it Love.

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.

A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself.