I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.

To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.

We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on

Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.

it is strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners, or in dreams

Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove something in the end. They are written as the Indians turn down twigs to mark their path through the forest. He cuts his way through life as if no one had ever taken that road before, leaving these signs for those who come after, should they care to see which way he went.

Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.