To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.
The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
The Heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high.
Sweep away the clutter of things that complicate our lives.
How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature.
Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.
There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food.
Nothing can be more useful to you than a determination not to be hurried.
The indescribable innocence of and beneficence of Nature,-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!
You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.