There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is madeand at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.

He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.

When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.

Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.