“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude”

“Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.”

“Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day. ”

“... Humans turn the places they live into great crowded piles of mud and stone, like the nests termites build--but what happens when in all the world there are only termite hills left but no bush?”

“There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?”

“I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. -St.John Rivers”