“What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.”

“The attitude of resistance is one of weakness inasmuch as it only faces an enemy. It has its back to all that is truly attractive.”

“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.”

“It matters not where or how far you travel,--the farther commonly the worse,--but how much alive you are.”

“But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted.”

“I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.”

“I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to the other”

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”

“The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.”

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My Thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing to definite - only a sense of existence”

“I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths, and skies and seas around. —”

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”

“The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”