Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

The people respect and believe in men who fulfill their duty.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

All men hate the nagging.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

Study men, not historians.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God’s mountains.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

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.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus, every boy is a challenge to his elders.

We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we never really touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the sound that is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, not the breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, the sound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots.

The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents – electric wave motion – will have the sway.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

The quietly pacifist peaceful always die to make room for men who shout.

If there’s a pregnancy rumor, people will find out it’s not true when you wind up not being pregnant, like nine months from now, and if there’s a house rumor, they’ll find out it’s not true when you are actively not ever spotted at that house.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves.

The faster you go, the shorter you are.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Men and women may form associations for and among themselves and be governed by stipulations that are mutually acceptable.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.