It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays.