Almost every day, instead of going to school when I ought to have gone, I usually made for the fields, where I spent the day.

There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures.

My drawings at first were made altogether in watercolors, but they wanted softness and a great deal of finish.

I looked long and carefully at the picture of a stag painted by Landseer - the style was good, and the brush was handled with fine effect, but he fails in copying Nature, without which the best work will be a failure.

If I can procure three hundred good substantial names of persons, or bodies, or institutions, I cannot fail to do well for my family, although I must abandon my life to its success, and undergo many sad perplexities and perhaps never see again my own beloved America.

There is the morass, wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking over the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, whereby one treads down the forests of Labrador; and the unexpected bunting or sylvia which perchance, and indeed as if by chance alone, you now and then see flying before you, or hear singing from the ground creeping plant.

I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds.