People seldom hit what they do not aim at.

Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics.

To see wild life you must go forth at wild season.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.

The principal, the only, thing a man makes, is his condition of fate. Though commonly he does not know it, nor put up a sign to this effect, "My own destiny made and mended here." (Not yours.) He is a master workman in the business. He works twenty-four hours a day at it, and gets it done. Whatever else he neglects or botches, no man was ever known to neglect this work. A great many pretend to make shoes chiefly, and would scout the idea that they make the hard times which they experience.