Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.

No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

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.

No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.

You never gain something but that you lose something.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.