That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.

One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.

God will not make himself manifest to cowards

The field cannot be seen from within the field.

But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility.

First be a good animal.

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.