“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

“Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”

“Things do not change; we change.”

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

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

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”

“All good things are wild and free.”

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...”

“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.”

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”