Universally, the better gold the worse man. The political economist defies us to show any gold mine country that is traversed by good roads, or a shore where pearls are found on which good schools are erected.

To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.

...in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in the streets or villages...in the woods we return to reason and faith.

Tart, cathartic virtue.

People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind's eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name of hero or saint.

No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my back.

There is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.