It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.

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!

The life without men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

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.