All quotes

How to make the getting our living poetic! for if it is not poetic, it is not life but death that we get.

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize; but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself.

What signifies the census--this periodical numbering of men--to one who has no friend?

Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not.

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning.

Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.

Our life is frittered away by detail

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children.

In society you will not find health, but in nature.

Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom.

To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.

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

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

Our whole system of self-government will crumble either if officials elect what laws they will enforce or citizens elect what laws they will support.

Surely civilization is old enough, surely mankind is mature enough so that we ought in our own lifetime to find a way to permanent peace.

There is no short road to the realization of these aspirations.

The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.

If citizens do not like a law, their duty as honest men and women is to discourage its violation; their right is openly to work for its repeal.