Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.

This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.

Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return-prepared to send beck our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, brother and sister, and wife and child and friends and never see them again,-if you have paid your debts and made your will, and settled your affairs and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.