“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot...”

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

“Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.”

“I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my...”

“I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been b...”

“One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / th...”

“It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.”

“Dawn, slowly filling Church Street with grey light, disclosed another day of war. Because it did this, this dawn bore no more resemblance to a peace-time dawn than the aspect of nature on a Sunday ...”

“Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it is like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is-my own tr...”

“Nature reflects the moods of the wizard.”

“My calling ties me to no office, makes me no man's slave, compels me to no action which my soul condemns. It sets me free from town life, which I loathe; and allows me to breathe clean air, to exer...”

“Its as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.”

“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”