Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionately to their occupancy of your thoughts.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.

Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain.

Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud; and after summer evermore succeeds barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold: so cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.

Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.

I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.

Waves are inspiring not because they rise and fall, but because each time they fall they never fail to rise again.

Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something you have never seen before.