I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this...

Le citoyen doit-il un seul instant, dans quelque mesure que ce soit, abandonner sa conscience au législateur ?(LA DÉSOBÉISSANCE CIVILE)

Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.

Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand…Simplify, simplify!

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon...

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that...

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, But only thinks and does; Though surely out ’twill leak Without the help of Greek, Or any tongue.

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved...

The ways by which you may get your money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earn money ‘merely’ is to be truly idle or worse. If the labourer gets...

for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.

Your church is a baby-house made of blocks.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes a-foot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles, the fare ninety cents. That...

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning...

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the...

‎I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights — any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of...

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity...

It’s not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

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.

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through...

We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The...

Probably no country was ever ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule...

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again....

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of...

Le mieux que je puisse faire pour mon ami est d’être son ami.

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been...

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast...

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.

To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exlcude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.

As for clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it,...

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all,...

The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us...