We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!
Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived. Perchance he is not confounded by many knowledges, and has not sought out many inventions, but how to take many fishes b...
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.
There is a low mist in the woods—It is a good day to study lichens.
The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest o...
Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows that surround it. We need the tonic of wildness...
My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said...
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be...
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.
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.
I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.
I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been conv...
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 to so...
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream, than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, w...
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character...