I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.

The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.