If we see nature as pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; but seen as progressing, she is beautiful.

When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

Generally speaking, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might be written today for the next ten years with sufficientaccuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to interest, still less alarm us; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I might attend.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.

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.