Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections. - Henry David Thoreau

The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.

The earth has some virtue in it; when seeds are put into it, they germinate; when turtles’ eggs, they hatch in due time. Though the mother turtle remained and brooded them, it would still nevertheless be the universal world turtle which, through her, cared for them as now. Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.