I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches.

The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit; is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.