“The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.”

“I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.”

“Sobre todo, no podemos permitirnos el lujo de no vivir en el presente.”

“the mission of men there seems to be,like so many busy demons,to drive the forest out of the country.”

“That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way.”

“As for Doing-good...I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.”

“The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise.”

“It's not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?”

“Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream-world into a reality.”

“We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsmen who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.”

“A man's riches are based on what he can do without.”

“Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it”

“What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?”

“There are many fine things we cannot say if we have to shout.”

“There are thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

“If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man—then you are ready for a walk.”

“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.”