“A gun will give you the body, not the bird”

“We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun,”

“You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body”

“As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.”

“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?”

“Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.”

“The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.”