When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.

The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.

Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

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.

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.