It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.

Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.

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

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his medicine.