How I have walked... day after day, and all alone, to see if there was not something among the old things which was new!

We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out is our own ignorance and folly.

None know how often the hand of God is seen in a wilderness but them that rove it for a man's life.

It was not that the jagged precipices were lofty, that the encircling woods were the dimmest shade, or that the waters were profoundly deep; but that over all, rocks, wood, and water, brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.

To walk with nature as a poet is the necessary condition of a perfect artist.

The ills of discrimination are still with us. We have to continue the tenacity and vigilance of the 1960s. Racial understanding is not something we find; it's something we create.

Nothing is invented and brought to perfection all at once.