“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”

“The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day.”

“As surely as the sunset in my latest Novembershall translate me to the ethereal world,and remind me of the ruddy morning of youth;as surely as the last strain of music which falls on my decaying earshall make age to be forgotten,or, in short, the manifold influences of naturesurvive during the term of our natural life,so surely my Friend shall forever be my Friend,and reflect a ray of God to me,and time shall foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship,no less than the ruins of temples.”

“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”

“I make myself rich by making my wants few.”

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”

“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a spectulator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”