I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Faith never makes a confession.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.