"Natural science sharpens the discrimination. There is..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.”

“You can take better care of your secret than another can.”

“The interminable forests should become graceful parks, for use and delight.”

“It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.”

“The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.”

“...the physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations; for, he himself knows best, and feels more surely where the shoe pinches...Physical conceptions are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.”

“Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.”

“Is there a difference? Yes. We are in harmony with nature, but never at peace.”

“This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious.”