Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.

In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their "good breeding" respects only secondary objects.

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.