We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.

If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.

What are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.