Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

There may be something petty in a refined taste; it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.

I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs is a mind that sends and minds that receive. I shall teach my own students how to teach themselves. My own school. No buildings. Break out of the classroom prison. All I need is SKY. The Universe can be my classroom - the great vast world of the Concord countryside.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.

To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.