Objects of charity are not guests.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.

You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode.

I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.

The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.