In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith.

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Every reform was once a private opinion.

Our prayers are prophets.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; alwayswe are invited to work.