There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

I couldn’t take pictures of green rolling hills.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

If I see a mountain, I just pick up and hike it.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

We can’t allow the world’s worst leaders to blackmail, threaten, hold freedom-loving nations hostage with the world’s worst weapons.

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

Here ends my forever memorable first High Sierra excursion. I have crossed the Range of Light, surely the brightest and best of all the Lord has built. And, rejoicing in its glory, I gladly, gratefully, hopefully pray I may see it again.

Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

The American people have not become heartless.

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

No traveler, whether a tree lover or not, will ever forget his first walk in a sugar-pine forest. The majestic crowns approaching one another make a glorious canopy, through the feathery arches of which the sunbeams pour, silvering the needles and gilding the stately columns and the ground into a scene of enchantment.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone’s life.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

I’m crepuscular.

The forests of America, however slighted by man, must have been a great delight to God; for they were the best he ever planted. The whole continent was a garden, and from the beginning, it seemed to be favored above all the other wild parks and gardens of the globe.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.

Nature abhors annihilation.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

When you’re outside, and everything is highland, it’s like nature has its own sound, and that’s one of my favorite sounds. I really loved sitting still silently outside, in a tree or in a bush, to just think.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.