I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

We slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.

It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man's busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there.

In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.