It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields, while a rosy glow, at first scarce discernible, gradually deepened and suffused every mountain-top, flushing the glaciers and the harsh crags above them. This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.