Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.

Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.

And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.