Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead.

Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk. Why should the hen set all day? She can lay but one egg, and besides she will not have picked up materials for a new one. Those who work much do not work hard.

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly.

Not that the story need to be long, but it will take a long time to shorten it.

I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.

Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that. We are no longer the representatives of our former selves.

not sit while the wind went by. Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer?

He teaches how to void excrement and urine and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.

The natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? 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 which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?

There can be no very black melancholy for him who has his senses still and lives in the midst of nature.