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

It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.

All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.

We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.