“All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.”

“A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit until we have so conducted that we feel like new men in the old.”

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

“In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”

“Be not simply good; be good for something.”

“For I believe that climate does thus react on man--as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.”

“Girls and boys and young women generally seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men of business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt from something or other; and though they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was obvious that they did not.”