"The flowering of civilization is the finished..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A weed is a plant we've found no use for yet.”

“Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”

“As soon as there is life there is danger.”

“May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past.”

“The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows, have sprung up in their midst. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.”

“A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.”

“He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.”

“The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.”

“I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man.”