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if it has in store any of what I may call the food of study and philosophy, nothing can be pleasanter than an old age of leisure

One may be happy to a good degree, I think, in a faithful friend, a moderate fortune, and a retired life; further than this I know nothing to wish; but if there be anything beyond it, I wish it you.

The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter.

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning.

What signifies the census--this periodical numbering of men--to one who has no friend?

In society you will not find health, but in nature.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived

Reverie is a loose dreaming into which a man falls; meditation is a strong, purposeful thinking into which a man rises.

Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.

Every feature became more rigidly alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect; for going to the mountains is like going home.

the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men

Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you cannot go so far that life and death are not before you.

It is only when life is sluggish within us that we speak: only at moments when reality lies far away, and we do not wish to be conscious of our brethren.

Some there are that have no silence, and that kill the silence around them, and these are the only creatures that pass through life unperceived.

Ambition is of all others the most contrary humour to solitude; glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

In our ordinary actions there is not one of a thousand that concerns ourselves.

Let us tell ambition that it is she herself who gives us a taste of solitude; for what does she so much avoid as society?

Retire yourself into yourself, but first prepare yourself there to receive yourself: it were a folly to trust yourself in your own hands, if you cannot govern yourself.

There is nothing so unsociable and sociable as man, the one by his vice, the other by his nature.

Whereas having many friends puts people apart and severs and disunites them, by transferring and shifting the tie of friendship too frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by the diffusing and compacting of intimacy.

it seems to me that the Muses aided our old writers to complete their finest and most esteemed works by calling in exile as a fellow-worker

Society we must have; but let it be society, and not exchanging news, or eating from the same dish.

Just to touch the lichened bark of a tree, or the end of a spray projecting over the path as I walked, seemed to repeat the same prayer in me.

Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.