I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.

Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.

Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.

To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.

One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.