I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.

The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks and shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

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

Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.

Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.