It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself.

All great enterprises are self-supporting.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs.

It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.

When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.