I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.

Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative.

Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.

There is hardly a man on earth who will take advice unless he is certain that it is positively bad.

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.

Leap, and the net will appear.

I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.

Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all - that has been my religion.

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice - no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.

I have discovered the secret of happiness - it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy.

If you think you can do it, you can.

How beautiful the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

The secret of happiness is something to do.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.

The spirit of man can endure only so much and when it is broken only a miracle can mend it.

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.

To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday.

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another.

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

Some men are like nails, very easily drawn; others however are more like rivets never drawn at all.

A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind.

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

A man can get discouraged many times but he is not a failure until he begins to blame somebody else and stops trying.

To me - old age is always ten years older than I am.

A plump, well-fed stream is as satisfying to behold as a well-fed animal or a thrifty tree. One source of charm in the English landscape is the full, placid stream the season through; no desiccated watercourses will you see there, nor any feeble, decrepit brooks, hardly able to get over the ground.

A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.

All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock.

As life nears its end with me, I find myself meditating more and more upon the mystery of its nature and origin, yet without the least hope that I can find out the ways of the Eternal in this or in any other world.

As with other phases of nature, I have probably loved the rocks more than I have studied them.

August is the month of the high-sailing hawks. The hen hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure and seems always at his ease. How beautiful and majestic are his movements!

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.

England is not a country of granite and marble, but of chalk, marl, and clay.

Father knew me not. All my aspirations in life were a sealed book to him, as much as his peculiar religious experiences were to me.

Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man.

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter.

How many thorns of human nature are bristling conceits, buds of promise grown sharp for want of congenial climate.

I am for 100 per cent Americanism, 100 per cent efficiency, and 100 per cent life. I expect to live to be 100 years old.

I am sure I was an evolutionist in the abstract, or by the quality and complexion of my mind, before I read Darwin, but to become an evolutionist in the concrete, and accept the doctrine of the animal origin of man, has not for me been an easy matter.

I crave and seek a natural explanation of all phenomena upon this earth, but the word 'natural' to me implies more than mere chemistry and physics. The birth of a baby and the blooming of a flower are natural events, but the laboratory methods forever fail to give us the key to the secret of either.

I have discovered the secret of happiness. It is work.

I went to the Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that would produce a Wordsworth.