“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.”

“It is a great art to saunter.”

“Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.”

“In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain–I find no sea room—but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore. ”

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

“By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down.”

“I was determined to know beans.”

“There is more day left to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

“My practice is “nowhere”, my opinion is here.”

“Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.”

“We should be men first, and subjects afterward.”

“The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with their liberal allowance of time.”

“We must look for a long time before we can see.”

“Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.”

“The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.”

“I will not through humility become the devil's attorney”

“I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.”

“I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.”

“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”

“I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.”

“As with our colleges, so with a hundred 'modern improvements'; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance.”

“It's circumstantial evidence, like finding a trout in the milk.”

“If ever I was sure that someone was coming to help me, I should run like hell.”

“If ever I was sure that someone was coming to help me, I should run like hell.”

“It is hard to forget that which it is worse than useless to remember.”

“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”

“Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.”

“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.”

“The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.”

“It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”

“The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like

“Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.”

“A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.”

“No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.”

“Where shall we look for standard English but to the words of a standard man?”