The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.

My friend is one who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than what I am. . . . What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in bar-rooms and elsewhere, but it does not deserve the name of virtue.

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

But, commonly, men are as much afraid of love as of hate.

Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.