All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises.

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

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

Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower ; the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.