What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,-no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.

Self reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

A good deal of our politics is physiological.

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 passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century.

An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.