The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?

If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.

I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.

Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning.