The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.