The most alive is the wildest.

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remotest parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me.... A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me.

We cannot put a noose around another man's neck without first hanging ourselves.

When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters.