Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.

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.

I have travelled a good deal in Concord.

A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.

I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory.

Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moonnor firefly has shown me the causeway to it.