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.

There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher.

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words akind of blood must circulate forever.

Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.

The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it.

It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound.