“Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.”

“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”

“I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.”

“My life more civil is and freeThan any civil polityYe princes, keep your realmsAnd circumscribed powerNot wide as are my dreamsNor rich as is this hour”

“to one whose elastic and vigorous thoughts keep pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not the labors and attitudes of men, morning is when I am awake and there is dawn in me. ”

“The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.”

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.”