Antecedents

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.

There are so many things about which some old man ought to tell one while one is little; for when one is grown one would know them as a matter of course

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn

Heredity is nothing but stored environment

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

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