Cannot we let [children] be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One's enough.

It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march.

The soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after.

All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.

We all need someone who can help us do what we already can.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

If the gatherer gathers too-much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates, monopolies and exceptions.