When nature made the blue-bird she wished to propitiate both the sky and the earth, so she gave him the color of the one on his back and the hue of the other on his breast.

Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.

I am in love with this world . . . I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests, sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts, the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds, and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.

How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit to know.

The life of nature we must meet halfway; it is shy, withdrawn, and blends itself with a vast neutral background. We must be initiated; it is an order the secrets of which are well guarded.

I want nothing less than a faith founded upon a rock, faith in the constitution of things. The various man-made creeds are fictitious, like the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia’s Chair, the Big Dipper; the only thing real in them is the stars, and the only thing real in the creeds is the soul’s aspiration toward the Infinite.

The God of the Puritans...was a monster too horrible to contemplate.