If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

A man should give us a sense of mass.

Who does not sometimes envy the good and the brave, who are no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his own conversation with finite nature?

The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man.

Men do not believe in the power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims.