Earliest

Famous quotes containing the word earliest:

    I perceive that in these woods the earliest settlements are, for various reasons, clustering about the lakes, but partly, I think, for the sake of the neighborhood as the oldest clearings. They are forest schools already established,—great centres of light.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
    Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
    Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
    And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
    Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
    Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
    How often have I loitered o’er the green,
    Where humble happiness endeared each scene.
    Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)

    The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
    Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)