The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

The fact which the politician faces is merely that there is less honor among thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that theyare thieves.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.