I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.