"Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify"
"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end"
"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them"
"Only that day dawns to which we are awake"
"Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him"
"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain"
"Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution"
"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand"
"Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?"
"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind"
"Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant"
"It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature"
"I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes"
"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society"
"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment"
"Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth"
"It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes"
"In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high"
"I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment"
"I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business"
"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?"
"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it"
"Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts"
"Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing"
"There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be"
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready"
"Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces"
"Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day"
"Things do not change; we change"
"There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted"
"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected"
"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion"
"How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it"
"There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before"
"Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are"
"May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!"
"Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after"
"Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men"
"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen"
"I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born"
"I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls"
"How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them"
"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?"
"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success"
"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it"
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
"Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man"
"In wilderness is the preservation of the world"
"We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see"
