As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.

I long for wildness, a nature which I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood thrush forever sings, where the hours are early morning ones, and there is dew on the grass, and the day is forever unproved, where I might have a fertile unknown for a soil about me.

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

At present our only true names are nicknames.

The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.