Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it peace, security and freedom, and it is sacrificing her sons only for the most noble and humanitarian purposes. That is a lie; and it is an ancient lie, yet generations still rise and believe it.

It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.

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

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet: he it is who makes the truest use of the pine-who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane. . . .

In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.