It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

I sailed on the North River last night with my flute, and my music was a tinkling stream which meandered with the river, and fell from note to note as a brook from rock to rock. I did not hear the strains after they had issued from the flute, but before they were breathed into it, for the original strain precedes the sound by as much as the echo follows after, and the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees and beasts. Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts, the very undertow of our life's stream.

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.

Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.

The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.