Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves, where no villages need be destroyed, in which the bear and panther, and some even of the hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civilized off the face of the earth," - our forests, not to hold the king's game merely, but to hold and preserve the king himself also, the lord of creation, - not for idle sport or food, but for inspiration and our own true re-creation?

I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.

A fact may blossom into a truth.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.

If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.