I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.

Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years retouches it.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

The traveler must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements.

We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.