I suppose that I have not many months to live: but of course I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but t...
If a man does not keep pace with hiscompanions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Lethim step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.It is not important that he sh...
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
It is not enough to be busy so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. [; November 16, 1857]
To be awake is to be alive.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one a...
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or rou...
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
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 b...
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthrig...