White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!

They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy evil, that they may no longer have have it to regret.

Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Our molting season, like that of the fouls, must be a crisis in our lives.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.