William Howitt

David in his psalms, Solomon in his songs and proverbs, the Prophets in the sublime outpourings of their awful inspiration, and Christ in his parables, those most beautiful and perfect of all allegories, luxuriate in signs and similes …

Botany has introduced us to a more intimate acquaintance with the names and characters, and with something also of the physical economy of both "the trees of the wood" and of the smallest plants which flourish at their feet; so that …

Woods are to us anything but solitudes — they are populous and inexhaustible worlds, where creatures that mock the grasp but not the mind, a matchless phantasmagoria, flit before us; alternately make us merry with their pleasant follies, …

Mountains! how one's heart leaps up at the very word! There is a charm connected with mountains so powerful, that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit …

The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however …

Unlike all other founders of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no desire of dominance; and His system, unlike all other systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly beneficent, and — most marvelous of all — went to break all …