Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be. - Henry David Thoreau

Painters are wont, in their pictures of Paradise, to strew the ground too thickly with flowers. There should be moderation in all things. Though we love flowers, we do not want them so thick under our feet that we cannot walk without treading on them.

Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and head-lands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round, —for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, —do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.