“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”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“Morning brings back the heroic ages.”

“How godlike, how immortal, is he?”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.”

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”