Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.