If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them. Many a weed here stands for more of life to me than the big trees of California would if I should go there. We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.

Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.

History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Politics is but a narrow field.