There is no eloquence without a man behind it.

Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground.

Machinery is aggressive. The weaver becomes a web, the machinist a machine. If you do not use the tools, they use you. All tools are in one sense edge-tools, and dangerous.

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do.

[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.