“While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.”

“It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.”

“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.”

“I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.”

“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them”

“Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.”

“Beauty is where it is perceived. When I see the sun shinning on the woods across the pond, I think this side the richer which sees it.”