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The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the d...more

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No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to b...more

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What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

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He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

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It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

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For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully though I never received one cent for it.

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What are these pines & these birds about? What is this pond a-doing? I must know a little more.

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When I would recreate myself I seek the darkest wood the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a...more

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To be awake is to be alive.

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I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my b...more

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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree or a yellow birch or an old acquaintance a...more

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The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

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The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance o...more

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Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.

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The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient wh...more