The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.
There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.
I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation, – as if the bud would surely blossom; and soI am content to live.
I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.
I could lecture on dry oak leaves; I could, but who would hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.
If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
Then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman cry of the loons at their unearthly revels.
When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump; as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.
I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.
The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap.
I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.
Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.
The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man.
We have reason to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man.
The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.
We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.