“To strong, susceptible characters, the music of nature is not confined to sweet sounds.”

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness.

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.

The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.

To be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.

All the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

Most young people find botany a dull study. So it is, as taught from the text-books in the schools; but study it yourself in the fields and woods, and you will find it a source of perennial delight.

You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

In winter, the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.

We talk of communing with Nature, but ’tis with ourselves we commune.

Like tens of thousands of others, I have been a spectator of, rather than a participator in, the activities – political, commercial, sociological, scientific – of the times in which I have lived.

Nothing. The Infinite knows no time, no space, no great, no small, no beginning, no end.

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

I’ve been worryin’ that we all, live our lives, in the confines of fear

The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.

We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.

Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts.

Fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.

Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions.