In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time."

To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

I am very little of a traveler.

We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.