Conformity is the inspiration of much second-rate virtue. - Sarah Orne Jewett

To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service, — this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or ignorance or uncertainty.

It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.

I took new pleasure in the thought that in a piece of wild pasture land like this one may get closest to Nature, and subsist upon what she gives of her own free will. There have been no drudging, heavy-shod ploughmen to overturn the soil, and vex it into yielding artificial crops. Here one has to take just what Nature is pleased to give, whether one is a yellow-bird or a human being.