One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.

I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

Be wary of technology; it is often merely an improved means to an unimproved end.

It is worth the while to detect new faculties in man,--he is so much the more divine; and anything that fairly excites our admiration expands us. The Indian, who can find his way so wonderfully in the woods, possesses an intelligence which the white man does not,--and it increases my own capacity, as well as faith, to observe it. I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in other channels than I knew. It redeems for me portions of what seemed brutish before.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.