Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.

The sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place.

The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.