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But we have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more are we capable of seeing.

None other than this long brown land lays such a hold on the affections. The rainbow hills, the tender bluish mists, the luminous radiance of the spring, have the lotus charm.

Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you.

Some day the world will understand that, and the little oases on the windy tops of hills will harbor for healing its ailing, house-weary broods.

For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.

There is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy, than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.

For we never can make anything our own except that which is truly related to us.

The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.

The first and last lesson of the useful arts is, that Nature tyrannizes over our works.

It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances.

To be beautiful and to be calm, without mental fear, is the ideal of nature. If I cannot achieve it, at least I can think it.

The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.

Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.

Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: Surely not all in vain.

Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience

The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature.

Never had I felt confinement less—I who feel, when I am out of sight of living, growing grass, and out of sound of birds' voices and all rural sounds, that I am not properly alive!

Very, very early in my boyhood I had acquired the habit of going about alone to amuse myself in my own way.

Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.