The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them.

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

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of spring.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.