Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The longer I live, the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.
One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking
Science makes no claim to infallibility; it leaves that claim to be made by theologians.
A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: ‘To rise above little things’.
I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.
The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.
Few persons realize how much of their happiness, such as it is, is dependent upon their work.
As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them.
O bluebird, welcome back again, Thy azure coat and ruddy vest, Are hues that April loveth best.
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
Every day is a Sabbath to me. All pure water is holy water, and this earth is a celestial abode.
The love of nature is a different thing from the love of science, though the two may go together.
Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.
The floating vapour is just as true an illustration of the law of gravity as the falling avalanche.
There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.
If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books, friends, and nature.
A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.
I went to the Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would produce a Wordsworth.
Wisdom cannot come by railroad or automobile or aeroplane, or be hurried up by telegraph or telephone.
Man has climbed up from some lower animal form, but he has, as it were, pulled the ladder up after him.
My books are, in a way, a record of my life - that part of it that came to flower and fruit in my mind.
My motto is never to try to imitate anybody: I have always looked inward and followed the inward voice.
How readily the bluebirds become our friends and neighbors when we offer them suitable nesting retreats!
I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey.
Sometimes I am worried by the thought of the effect that life in the city will have on coming generations.
Then, again, how annoying to be told it is only five miles to the next place when it is really eight or ten!
He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.
Without the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious, there is no art, no religion, no literature.
Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.
The deeper our insight into the methods of nature . . . the more incredible the popular Christianity seems to us.
The gift of perfume to a flower is a special grace like genius or like beauty, and never becomes common or cheap.
How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate.
I think rain is as necessary to the mind as to vegetation. My very thoughts become thirsty, and crave the moisture.
Emerson's fame as a writer and thinker was firmly established during his lifetime by the books he gave to the world.
That which distinguishes this day from all others is that then both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges.
Nature comes home to one most when one is at home. The stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also.
A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.
What a severe yet master artist old Winter is... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel.
I am for 100 per cent Americanism, 100 per cent efficiency, and 100 per cent life. I expect to live to be 100 years old.
If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.
The Nature Lover is not looking for mere facts but for meanings, for something he can translate into terms of his own life.
How much there is in books that one does not want to know, that it would be a mere weariness and burden to the spirit to know.
Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.
The human body is a steed that goes freest and longest under a light rider, and the lightest of all riders is a cheerful heart.
Man is, and always has been, a maker of gods. It has been the most serious and significant occupation of his sojourn in the world.
The atmosphere of our time is fast being cleared of the fumes and deadly gases that arose during the carboniferous age of theology.