In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.

Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time."

Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?

It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.

I learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think.

Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.