Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died.

The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.

To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.