I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural.

The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace.

Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

Man is but the place where I stand.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.