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

Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.

It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

There is ripe fruit over your head.

When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.