But honest instinct comes a volunteer; Sure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit, While still too wide or short in human wit.

most of the work is being done to counter the effects of other people’s work: when we all agree to work half as much, the total result would be the same.

I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing.

If I am unaware of love, I live drably. If I become intoxicated with love, I live in dreamland. If I recognize love, and shake his hand then comfort, dreams, and sometimes intoxication become mine to drench in and give away as well. -Nellie Curtiss.

If you will discipline yourself to make your mind self-sufficient you will thereby be least vulnerable to injury from the outside.

Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

Simplicity, clarity, singleness: these are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy.

He loved the twilight that surrounds The border-land of old romance; Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance, And banner waves, and trumpet sounds, And ladies ride with hawk on wrist, And mighty warriors sweep along, Magnified by the purple mist, The dusk of centuries and of song.

You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognises genius.

The Widow and the Sheep A certain poor widow had one solitary Sheep. At shearing time, wishing to take his fleece and to avoid expense, she sheared him herself, but used the shears so unskillfully that with the fleece she sheared the flesh. The Sheep, writhing with pain, said, Why do you hurt me so, Mistress? What weight can my blood add to the wool? If you want my flesh, there is the butcher, who will kill me in an instant; but if you want my fleece and wool, there is the shearer, who will shear and not hurt me. The least outlay is not always the greatest gain.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been!".

Oh, Brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.

Youth is when we are always hunting greener pastures, and middle age is when we can barely mow the one we've got.

There 's small choice in rotten apples. -The Taming of the Shrew. Act i. Sc. 1.

The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs

To speak and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.