what is life worth if one has nothing to give away? This lack, it seems to me, must be the sharpest pang of poverty.

I have always noticed that when people consider others eccentric, it is because they are reveling in some form of enjoyment that their critics can neither compass nor share.

the various earth odors all have a separate tale to tell, and the leaf mold of the woods bears a wholly different fragrance from that of the soil under pasture turf, or the breath that the garden gives off in great sighs of relief when it is relaxed and refreshed by a summer shower.

Mother love is invariably held sacred, as it should be, but why has father love never had its due?

in the city at best one lives the life of others, the life of the shop, the street, the crowd, while in the country one must live one's own life.

even as human vitality is at its lowest ebb in the early morning, so it is with plant life in the early spring.

Why is it that so many people think that charity consists in giving away merely what they cannot use instead of the article the recipient needs?

That is the stimulus of nature it is never, never old, and always developing. Even the scarred, wrinkled earth herself is a mere infant among the old ladies and gentlemen that tread foot-paths in the sky.

what's the good of having news an' ye must coop it? It's like cold veal pie upon the chest for supper, the same being over old, under done, and dry o' gravy.

It doesn't so much matter what one loves. To love is the transfiguring thing.

Neither a garden nor a gardener can be made in one year, nor in one generation even.