 Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. |
| Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. |
| The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. |
| I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. |
| Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once. |
| A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town. |
| Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand. |
| Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams. |
| There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself. |
| Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. |
| To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. |
| 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. |
| There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life. |
| It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive. |
| In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. |
| Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way. |
| No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. |
| In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed. |
| The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument. |
| Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. |
