From "Nature" I-IV

"To go into solitude man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society.  I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me."


"The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.  His intercourse with heaven and earth become part of his daily food."


"Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result."


"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors seem ridiculous."


"The wind and the waves", said Gibbon, "are always on the side of the ablest navigator"  So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven.


"Nothing Divine dies.  All good is eternally reproductive."
"il piu nel uno."  Nothing is quite beautiful alone:  nothing but is beautiful in the whole.  A single object is only so far beautiful as it suggests this universal grace." 


"The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.....new imagery is created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed when there is no currency in the vaults"


"The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics.  "Thus the whole is greater than it's part"; reaction is equal to action"; "The smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time"


"A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text."


"Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they are to be executed."


"In like manner, what good heed, nature forms in us!  She pardons no mistakes.  Her yea is yea and her nay, nay."


"Nothing in nature is exhausted in it's first use.  When a thing has served and end to the uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior motive."


"Words are finite organs of the infinite mind.  They cannot cover the dimensions of what is absolute truth.  They break, chop, impoverish it.  An action is the perfection and publication of a thought"