The foundation of culture, as of character, is at last the moral sentiment.

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

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.

The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Teach that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.

In certain men digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger these are, the individual is so much weaker. The more ofthese drones perish, the better for the hive.