There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.

By one bait or another, Nature allures inhabitants into all her recesses.

I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. [It allows you to] be the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clark of your own streams and oceans; [to] explore your own higher latitudes; [to] be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.