I noticed, as I had done before, that there was a lull among the mosquitoes about midnight, and that they began again in the morning. Nature is thus merciful. But apparently they need rest as well as we.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.

Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.