I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the "hot bread and sweet cakes;" and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.

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

The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.

In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.

The way you spend Christmas is far more important than how much.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.