Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison.

...A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from - toward; it is the history of every one of us. It is a great art to saunter.

There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!

What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.

Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.

I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.

We hate the kindness which we understand.