All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet.

Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.

I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.