As the stars looked to me when I was a shepherd in Assyria, they look to me now as a New-Englander.

I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.

Ktaadnis an Indian word signifying highest land,... very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, andit will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.

I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher.

I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.