It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

It is tranquil people who accomplish much.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.

Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes.

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.