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

Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coastand tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man's Land.

Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them.

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.