In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

I realized a school doesn't need a School Committee or Trustees or Governors or lumber or approved textbooks. All a school needs is a mind that sends and minds that receive. I shall teach my own students how to teach themselves. My own school. No buildings. Break out of the classroom prison. All I need is SKY. The Universe can be my classroom - the great vast world of the Concord countryside.

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.