My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against.

If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow?

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.

I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.