“We are a race of tit-men...”

“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit comfortably on your shoulder.”

“It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.”

“The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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 should be men first, and subjects afterward.”

“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.”

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

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

“I was determined to know beans.”

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

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

“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. ”

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

“It is a great art to saunter.”

“There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.”

“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.”