“A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.”

Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.

It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense – the home sense – which operates unerringly.

The trunk of a tree is like a community where only one generation at a time is engaged in active business, the great mass of the population being retired and adding solidity and permanence to the social organism.

As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in this or in any other world.

Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.

Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.

We are really here to be happy and to make others happy.

The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter.

The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen; if she is to be disposed of, they starve her to death, and the queen herself will sting nothing but royalty, nothing but a rival queen.

If one gains an interest in the history of the earth, he is quite sure to gain an interest in the history of the life on the earth. If the former illustrates the theory of development, so must the latter.

Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of nature in her milder and more familiar forms.

As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them.

The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds.

More than any other poet, Whitman is what we make him; more than any other poet, his greatest value is in what he suggests and implies rather than in what he portrays, and more than any other poet must he wait to be understood by the growth of the taste of himself.

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

The truth is simple, you do not die from love. You only wish you did.

[John D. Rockefeller] didn’t care about anyone he did anything just to be rich and be the only company standing without any competition. He destroyed anyone else.

If he had 30 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, I can tell you exactly how he did it, what type of shots he made and who he passed to.

When I was a player, I didn’t expect my teammates to play the way I did. I did expect them to work hard every day and get better. And I never learned anything by losing.

Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.

I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people.