The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.

Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

The voice of nature is always encouraging.