I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.

It seems as if the more youthful and impressible streams can hardly resist the numerous invitations and temptations to leave theirnative beds and run down their neighbors' channels.

So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea breezes; of the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.