The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history: the use of the outer creation, to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation.

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.

The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims.

Take the place and attitude to which you see your unquestionable right, and all men acquiesce.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

Man is the end of nature; nothing so easily organizes itself in every part of the universe as he; no moss, no lichen is so easilyborn; and he takes along with him and puts out from himself the whole apparatus of society and condition extempore, as an army encamps in a desert, and where all was just now blowing sand, creates a white city in an hour, a government, a market, a place for feasting, for conversation, and for love.