One summer day, while I was walking along the country road on the farm where I was born, a section of the stone wall opposite me, and not more than three or four yards distant, suddenly fell down. Amid the general stillness and immobility about me the effect was quite startling. ... It was the sudden summing up of half a century or more of atomic changes in the material of the wall. A grain or two of sand yielded to the pressure of long years, and gravity did the rest.

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.

[T]he cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove.

I am in love with this world. It has been my home. It has been my point of outlook into the universe. I have never bruised myself against it nor tried to use it ignobly.

Oh, Spring is surely coming, Her couriers fill the air; Each morn are new arrivals, Each night her ways prepare; I scent her fragrant garments, Her foot is on the stair.

One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking