Whether he sleeps or wakes,--whether he runs or walks,--whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,--a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything, or leaves anything behind, but himself. Whatever he says or does, he merely reports himself. If he is in love, he loves; if he is in heaven, he enjoys; if he is in hell, he suffers. It is his condition that determines his locality.

It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.

"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it."

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.

Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it.