Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.

Nature is full of genius, full of divinity.

You can hardly convince a man of error in a life-time, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grand-children may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.

The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never dressed.... He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.

If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications.