I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future.

As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.

Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.

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