In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness. - Sarah Orne Jewett

I often wondered a great deal about the inner life and thought of these self-contained old fishermen; their minds seemed to be fixed upon nature and the elements rather than upon any contrivances of man, like politics or theology.

We are always looking forward to the passing and ending of winter, but when summer is here it seems as if summer must always last. As I went across the fields that day, I found myself half lamenting that the world must fade again, even that the best of her budding and bloom was only a preparation for another spring-time, for an awakening beyond the coming winter’s sleep.

If clergymen knew their congregations as well as physicians do, the sermons would be often more closely related to the parish needs.