I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.

I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me tobe doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.

Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.