Any sincere thought is irresistible.

I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that ourlife should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower.

A goal is a dream taken seriously.

Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?

You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry intotheir secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages, do not climb mountains,--their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never visited by them. Pomola is always angry with those who climb the summit of Ktaadn.

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck.