I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

Greatness is a property for which no man gets credit too soon; it must be possessed long before it is acknowledged.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

The plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.

As I walked in the woods I felt what I often feel that nothing can befall me in life, no calamity, no disgrace (leaving me my eyes) to which Nature will not offer a sweet consolation. Standing on the bare ground with my head bathed by the blithe air, & uplifted into the infinite space, I become happy in my universal relations. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign & accidental. I am the heir of uncontained beauty and power.

A great licentiousness treads on the heels of a reformation.

Man's actions are the picture book of his creeds.