Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.

For the most part, the best man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his grave.

My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.

I grow savager and savager every day, as if fed on raw meat, and my tameness is only the repose of untamableness. I dream of looking abroad summer and winter, with free gaze, from some mountain-side,... to be nature looking into nature with such easy sympathy as the blue-eyed grass in the meadow looks in the face of the sky. From some such recess I would put forth sublime thoughts daily, as the plant puts forth leaves.

There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.