When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winterdecent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears.

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.

Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity.

Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.