Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

There is such a thing as caste, even in the West; but it is comparatively faint; it is conservatism here. It says, forsake not your calling, outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no bonds; the State is thy parent. Its virtue or manhood is wholly filial.

The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.

To be a philosopher... is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does not, and ought not to monopolizethe whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part.

Not till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.