“Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”

“Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.”

“I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.”

“A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.”

“I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

“Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.”

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

“Beauty is where it is perceived. When I see the sun shinning on the woods across the pond, I think this side the richer which sees it.”

“Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.”

“One little chore to do, one little commission to fulfil, one message to carry, would spoil heaven itself.”

“I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a passtime, if we live simply and wisely”

“The savage in man is never quite eradicated.”

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.”

“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”

“Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.”

“Cowards suffer, heroes enjoy.”

“The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.”

“My life is like a stroll upon the beach, as near to the ocean's edge as I can go.”

“It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.”

“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way”

“Even the best things are not equal to their fame.”

“A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.”

“There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony.”

“The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace.”

“When it is time to die, let us not discover that we never lived.”

“Philanthropy is. . . greatly overrated. A pain in the gut is not sympathy for the underprivileged, but the result of eating a green apple; the philanthropist gives to ease his own pain.”

“If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.”

“The poet writes the history of his own body.”

“Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.”

“A traveller! I love his title. A traveler is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from–toward; it is the history of every one of us.”

“This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night.”

“The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in the mind”

“There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.”

“It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.”

“Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.”

“If I should sell my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.”

“It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”

“After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.”

“The more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings.”

“Every man looks upon his wood pile with a sort of affection.”

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

“A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said.” ”

“The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.”

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.”

“It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.”

“The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course _à la mode_.”

“A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return”

“I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.”

“There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.”