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

The secret of happiness is something to do.

The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.

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.

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.