Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?

Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing.

We need the tonic of wildness.

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

All the past is here, present to be tried; let it approve itself if it can.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

It has been so written, for the most part, that the times it describes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark about them.