Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, would be good for me, too.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

Making a logging-road in the Maine woods is called "swamping" it, and they who do the work are called "swampers." I now perceivedthe fitness of the term. This was the most perfectly swamped of all the roads I ever saw. Nature must have coöperated with art here.