Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time."

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you.

The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure.

The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline.

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has as yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we. The most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both.