I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.

The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.

Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.