“Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.”

“Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?”

“No very black melencholy can come to he who lives in the midst of nature and has his senses still.....”

“Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death.”

“In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.”

“I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, anymore than I would have every acre of earth cultivated.”

“on the morning of many a first spring day...the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead. There needs no stronger proof of immortality.”

“For I believe that climate does thus react on man--as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.”

“If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.”

“The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in the Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

“Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.”

“There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon"—said Damodara, when his herds required new and larger pastures.”

“I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.”

“The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men ; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.”

“He understood, as he would write in "Walking," that "the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.”

“The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read the.”

“How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge?”

“Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.”

“When the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.”

“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.”

“As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.”

“How godlike, how immortal, is he?”

“Morning brings back the heroic ages.”

“I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.”

“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world.”

“Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.”

“The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but it is instinct.”

“Throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.”

“With respect to wit, I learned that there was not much difference between the half and the whole.”

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”

“I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant”

“One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?”

“The seasons and all their changes are in me.”

“if injustice, is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

“We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!”

“There is a low mist in the woods— It is a good day to study lichens.”

“Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading.”

“To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.”

“Still we live meanly like ants.”

“Confucious said, To know what we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

“Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?”

“The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.”

“The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.”

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought.”

“I am of the nature of Stone. It takes the summer’s sun to warm it.”

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!”

“Who hears the fishes when they cry?”

“Do not engage to find things as you think they are.”

“Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth.”

“In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us.”