The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.

Some would find fault with the morning, if they ever got up early enough.. The fault find faults even in Paradise.

Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.