It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.

To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements.

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.