The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,--I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!

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