We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?

Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.

Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.

While some men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.