I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, - tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it.

The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.

The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.

The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close.

He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.

We 've wholly forgotten how to die. But be sure you do die nevertheless. Do your work, and finish it. If you know how to begin, you will know when to end.

Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art.